


Life in a Flash of Brilliance

by nightingaelic



Series: The Alpha & The Omega [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout 4
Genre: Action, Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Canon-Typical Violence, Clairvoyance, Complicated Relationships, Dialogue Heavy, Drama & Romance, Father-Son Relationship, Friendship, Imprisonment, Leadership, Massachusetts, Mother-Son Relationship, Multi, Mystery, Politics, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Rescue, Responsibility, Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-04-21 13:22:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22078669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightingaelic/pseuds/nightingaelic
Summary: Following the discovery of the Institute's last hiding place, the Commonwealth's factions debate what should be done with the survivors. Sole Survivor Murphy has more pressing issues on her mind, such as the visions that keep showing her pieces of the past, the mystery of a woman who abandoned her old life for obscurity, and the men that vex her and leave her with more questions than answers.
Relationships: Arthur Maxson/Female Sole Survivor, Arthur Maxson/Sole Survivor, Robert Joseph MacCready/Female Sole Survivor, Robert Joseph MacCready/Sole Survivor
Series: The Alpha & The Omega [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1086468
Comments: 27
Kudos: 32





	1. Her Destination or Her Grave

The first thing Murphy noticed about the quarry’s interior was the cold. April had been kind to the Commonwealth so far, and despite the chill between allies aboveground, the sun had pierced the clouds and warmed the assembled parties without prejudice. Down here, however, the only warmth to be found was the clinical glare of caged work lights and the remains of laser blasts burned into the walls of cut stone. 

It was unnaturally quiet, and the footsteps of the five echoed as they made their way down from the metal door that blocked the entrance. Murphy craned her neck back at the high ceiling of unfinished marble above them. She felt like she was walking into an ancient tomb. 

Maxson cleared his throat and turned back to face the small party. “Our troops and Field Scribes have withdrawn, for the time being. They conducted a thorough re-inspection upon exiting, but Head Scribe Rothchild informed me that nothing new was found.” 

He pulled a short-range radio from inside his battlecoat and held it up, flicking on its power switch as he did. “Three recon squads will advance behind us, along with the chosen units from the Minutemen and the Railroad.” 

Haylen pulled three short-range radios from her own pack and handed two of them to Glory and Desdemona. “Channel two,” she said, and looked at Murphy apologetically. “You’ll just have to stay close to me, Captain.” 

“Check, check,” Glory said into hers, her voice fuzzy in the speakers of the three other radios. “So, Elder, gonna tell us why you’re down here personally, instead of sending one of your hundreds of super-soldiers? Over.” 

“Glory,” Desdemona said sharply. 

Maxson shot Glory a look too, but instead of answering, he turned and marched on into the darkness, Final Judgment steady in his hands. Glory shrugged and hiked her minigun up higher before retaking her position at the rear, smirking at Murphy as she passed her. 

They followed the Brotherhood Elder as the carved tunnel widened into an open area littered with rusted support beams and cranes. A pre-war computer terminal was fastened to one of the nearer beams, and Desdemona eyed it with interest. 

“Were you able to access any files?” the Railroad leader asked Maxson, gesturing at the terminal with her railway rifle. 

“This one contains only in-house messages, work orders and incident reports,” Maxson replied, his eyes methodically sweeping the open area. “There are more terminals further in, I understand, that point to… occult practices.” 

Glory snorted. “Occult practices? Like witches?” 

“Human sacrifice.” 

Haylen’s mouth dropped open, but Murphy caught the nonchalance in the Elder’s voice. “You don’t sound concerned,” she said, narrowing her eyes. 

“I am not.” Maxson looked back over his shoulder. “The suggestive pre-war entries themselves are written in a contemporary tone, and examination of the files’ origin data was corrupted, which I’m told is a rare enough occurrence with pre-war technology to be suspicious. Still, their effect was undeniable. The raiders that occupied this place prior to our arrival left their own computer entries that indicate perceived horrors in the darkness, and several of our soldiers and Scribes reported feelings of unease and dread during reconnaissance.” 

Murphy nodded. “So you think someone wanted this place to look and feel spooky.” 

“Three guesses who that might be,” Glory muttered. 

Maxson pointed down a rough ramp. “This is the first of four stations. While I doubt the entrance to the Institute bunker is hidden here, now would be the time to begin your search.” 

“My search.” Murphy took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay.” 

She held her arm as still as she could while Haylen fed the needle of Rebound into a vein at her elbow, then taped the tubing in place. The quarry was cold, but the chems flowing into her body were colder. 

“And put a hand up if I see anything odd,” she said, clenching and opening her fist repeatedly. “Got it. Let’s go.” 

Maxson nodded and pressed on, followed by Desdemona, Murphy, then Haylen and Glory. The marble ramp led down into a narrower corridor overshadowed by a grated platform, which made the space appear smaller than it was. The platform overhead cut off just before the five emerged at the second station, in the pool of a spotlight probably left by the raiders. 

“Advance to station one,” Maxson said into his radio. “Over.” 

_ “Copy that, Elder,” _ a voice answered. _ “Over and out.” _

Glory leaned around Haylen and hissed at Murphy. “Is it working?” 

“I don’t know if I should be concentrating or not,” Murphy admitted, turning to face the two women behind her. 

“It should come naturally,” Haylen assured her. “Well, not naturally. It’s a chem, so… you get the idea.” 

Murphy opened her mouth to ask a question, but she was cut off by a distant rumble from deeper in the quarry. The stone itself was groaning, a tired and threatening sound, but within that sound was a girl’s voice. 

_ “What is that, mom?” _

The group turned their heads to look up at the ceiling, held their breath as the noise died. Murphy looked up as well, unsure if they had heard the voice too. 

_ “That’s Fort Purity, Hale,” _ a woman’s voice answered the girl. _ “Come on, we need to get to Rivet City by sundown.” _

Murphy dropped her gaze back down to Haylen, and found herself in another time. Haylen was still there, but her cheeks were ruddier, more full, with fewer freckles and an expression of wonder. Her normally-tied back ginger hair was short, cropped close to her head, and she was all elbows in clothes that were at least three sizes too big for her. She was staring, open-mouthed, through Murphy. 

Though the quarry walls around her had disappeared, Murphy held her hand up and turned toward what the teenaged Haylen was admiring. There she found the silhouette of the Jefferson Memorial against a blooming, orange sky, shining in the sunset on the banks of the Potomac River. 

“What’s it doing, mom?” Haylen asked. 

Haylen’s mother, an equally-gangly woman with ginger hair of her own and a patient expression, stepped up next to her daughter. “Purifying the water,” she said, with a weary gesture at several enormous pipes that were pouring into the river from inside the memorial. “It’s why we’re here. Why everyone’s here.” 

“How do they do it?” 

Her mother chuckled. “Fuck if I know, Hale. I don’t even think the Brotherhood knows.” 

Haylen looked up at her mom curiously. “The Brotherhood?” 

“Aye.” Her mother jabbed a finger at a group of Scribes on a metal walkway that circled the outside of the building. “Brotherhood of Steel. Now come on, the caravan won’t wait for us.” 

She readjusted the enormous pack of belongings she was carrying and turned back to the cracked road behind Haylen, but her daughter stood a while longer and stared, watching the movements of the Brotherhood personnel as the sun slowly sank into the ruins. Murphy watched her face, and she smiled when she found the spark of determination she had first seen for herself in the courtyard outside the Cambridge Police Station. 

“What are you seeing, Murphy?” 

The sunset was gone in an instant, and an older Haylen was peering at her face, concerned. Murphy blinked and took a step back. 

“It’s gone,” she said breathlessly. 

Haylen flicked on a little flashlight, shining it into each of Murphy’s eyes in turn. Satisfied, she flipped her patient’s wrist over and felt her pulse. “What did you see?” 

“I saw you. You and your mom, in DC. Going to Rivet City?” 

Maxson relaxed his laser a hair. “The Capital Wasteland?” 

Glory scrunched her face up in disappointment. “Rivet City?” 

Haylen paled. “Mom?” 

The desperate, longing look on her face was enough to stop Murphy from describing the vision any further. She looked helplessly at Maxson, then Desdemona. 

Desdemona nodded. “Go,” she said, pointing an elbow back up the tunnel they had just emerged from. “Take her and confirm it. We’ll wait, but not for long.” 

Murphy took Haylen by the shoulder and walked a ways up the path with her before relating in a low voice what she had seen. Haylen listened, tears welling up all the while. When Murphy was done, she sniffed and wiped them from her eyes. 

“I remember,” she said quietly. “That was my first time in the ruins. Mom paid passage to the city with the caravan. She walked the whole way there with everything we owned on her back, got us set up in a room on the midship deck, waited tables at Gary’s Galley and didn’t take sass from anyone for three whole months.” 

Murphy frowned. “What happened to her?” 

Haylen looked away. “She picked up a case of the Blight. Fever, fatigue. Worse. It used to be a pretty common illness about 150 years ago, according to Brotherhood records, but it’s pretty rare now. Mom said she must have gotten it from one of the travelers passing through, when… when she could still talk, anyway.” 

“Haylen, I’m so… so sor-” 

Murphy sank back against the wall of the quarry, suddenly weak. She slid to the ground clumsily, and Haylen dashed to her side to ease her into a sitting position. 

“Talk to me,” she said, snapping back into the role of physician immediately. “Is it another memory? Is the Rebound dosage too potent? I’m not sure we can dilute it much more and have it still be effective.” 

“I don’t- I don’t know.” Murphy shook her head. “It’s hard to describe… it’s draining, but not usually in a physical way like this. I’ve never used chems to bring it on before, so I’m kind of in the dark.” 

Haylen nodded. “It’s the Rebound for sure. Involuntary muscle relaxation can be a side effect for some users. It’s going to get worse the longer you use it, and if your immune system is compromised by it, then any bump, any scrape, could get bacteria in your bloodstream and you’ll-” 

“Haylen, I’m okay.” Murphy pushed the lieutenant back and struggled to her feet again. “I have to do this. Germs, wobbles, the whole shebang. Now, if you’ve got any ideas for how to get my… _ condition _ to show me pretty pictures of the Institute entrance instead of sad things from your past, _ those _ I’d like to hear.” 

Haylen blinked. “It wasn’t sad.” 

“What?” 

“What you saw. It wasn’t sad.” Haylen smiled mournfully. “Well, it’s kind of sad now that my mom’s gone. But that day, that whole trip… I loved every minute of it. My mom was tired, but she put up with me like a professional, answered every question I had along the way. We were on an adventure, we were moving to the big city, just the two of us. And it’s the first time I saw the Brotherhood in action, had an inkling of what I might be able to do if I had their resources. It’s why I listened, when Rhys came to Rivet City years later looking for recruits.” 

Murphy raised her eyebrows, and Haylen blushed. “You might even say that day was what brought me here. Inspired me to become… me.” 

Murphy couldn’t help but smile at that. “Okay. But…” 

“Yeah, I know, that doesn’t help answer your question.” Haylen sighed. “I know you use meditation to try to shut the nightmares out. Do you think trying that- focusing on your breathing, the air around you, the feel of the space- might help direct it toward what we need to find?” 

“I…” Murphy pursed her lips. “I can try. Come on.” 

She and Haylen returned to the group. Haylen nodded to Maxson, and they pressed on. 

Beyond the second station the hallway was wider, its walls cut into angles that curved the party left. The five were silent, save their breathing and footsteps. Murphy, desperate to try to focus the prickly feeling the Rebound was beginning to have on her head, glued her eyes to the heavily-armored coat Desdemona had on. The Railroad leader was still wearing her faded scarf, threads of red and black criss-crossing shades of gray plaid, and the fringes of her auburn hair brushed gently over the cherished piece of fabric. The sight, the small sound, drew her in, dulled her other sensations as they moved forward in unison. 

The lights grew dimmer, the dust motes in the air thicker, and Murphy snapped out of her focus when Desdemona slowed. She could just make out an iron railing and another crane beyond Maxson, who drew up to the edge of a precipice bathed in darkness. He switched on a circuit breaker attached to the railing, and one by one an array of lights flickered to life above an enormous pit. 

Murphy squinted and moved up next to him. The light reflecting off the dust blinded her momentarily, preventing her from seeing just how deep the marble well went. 

“We’ve reached the third station,” Maxson said into his radio. “Advance to station two. Over.” 

_ “Copy that, Elder. Over and out.” _

The crackle of the radio echoed inside Murphy’s head, and the light from within the pit grew brighter, deeper, until it consumed every shadow in the quarry like a miniature sun. Murphy gasped and leaned heavily on the railing, squeezing her eyes shut to combat the brilliance. 

_ “Shhh.” _

When she opened her eyes, Murphy had to squint again. The light beating down on her now _ was _ the sun, harsh and unforgiving over a rocky landscape. Gnarled trees reached up into the sky, and the wind rattled through the dry and dormant grass around her. 

She was standing on a modest outcropping over a thicket of bushes, where two figures were concealing themselves. One, a man with ginger hair, sunglasses and a leather jacket, crouched motionless while his companion, a woman with an armored coat, a dark complexion and a darker expression, scanned the dirt road before them with a pair of binoculars. 

“They’re gone,” the woman said finally, handing the binoculars over to the man. When she turned her head, Murphy took in a sharp breath. It was Nike, the Railroad agent assigned to the Minutemen as their liaison. There were fewer lines in her face. Murphy guessed she was at least a decade younger than she was at present. 

The man pointed the binoculars at a barn that stood, silent, on a nearby hill. “Then let’s get in there, Watts,” he said, in a voice so familiar that it nearly stopped Murphy’s heart. “Come on.” 

Nike- _ Watts? _\- rose up out of the bushes and picked her way through the rocks, across the road at a surprising speed. The man followed her, and Murphy pounded after them, forgetting that this wasn’t real, that she was actually in a stone cavern, that she was supposed to put her hand up. She ran, two syllables matching the thuds of her boots against the ground, over and over. 

_ Deacon. _

Nike reached the barn first, leading with a pistol outfitted with a silencer. She kicked open a slightly-ajar door and stalked inside, while Deacon hugged the outside walls of corrugated steel, his own rifle at the ready. His face was different, with a more prominent nose, rugged chin and a criminal number of freckles, but his mannerisms, the way he moved, were familiar to her. Murphy followed him, and rounded the side of the barn to a scene of complete devastation. 

Having helped piece together several homesteads in the Commonwealth, Murphy could recognize the resilience and innovation of settlers in the structures they built. This was no exception. Sturdy fences ran in rows up the hill, encircling a swathe of land showing clear marks of care. The ground had been tilled by hand, the posts pounded in and boards nailed together, the water pump placed over troughs fashioned out of plastic barrel halves. The love was in the labor, and it all lay in ruins. 

Even Deacon’s rifle faltered for an instant as he took in the sight. Six brahmin lay dead on the ground, their skin singed around their wounds, the dirt around their feet churned up into mud. The neat rows of razorgrain were bent and broken, and water was leaking from several holes in the water trough. A woman lay dead next to it, her blank eyes staring at the bright sky. Another lay face-down in the razorgrain. 

“Lambda-8,” Deacon muttered. He scanned the hill before rushing to the first body. He set his gun down and put an ear to her heart, then her mouth, before lowering her gently and shutting her eyes with his fingers. 

“No one inside,” Nike said, exiting the barn to Murphy’s left. “Is she…” 

“Dead.” Deacon nodded. “She put up a fight, though. _ Goddammit.” _

Nike looked around. “Where’s the wife?” 

Deacon pointed to the body in the razorgrain, and Nike approached it warily, her eyes searching the field for enemies. She hesitated before flipping the second woman over, obscuring her partially from view. 

Both Nike and Deacon flinched when the woman coughed, her breaths wheezing and weak. There were laser burns on her legs and abdomen. She whispered something. 

“Shit, shit,” Nike hissed, gathering the woman up in her arms. “Deacon, I need a stimpak.” 

Deacon tossed her one, and Nike jabbed it into the woman’s hip. Her patient moaned and winced. 

“Shhh, it’s gonna be okay,” Nike whispered frantically. “The Courser’s gone. You need to tell us what happened. What’s your name?” 

Deacon moved to help Nike, and Murphy trailed him. She stopped in her tracks when the woman’s face came into view. Even though she was badly beaten, with blood pouring from her nose and lips, she knew that face. 

_ “Desdemona,” _ she whispered, at the same time as the woman on the ground. 

_ “Murphy! _ Wake _ up!” _

There was a sharp pain on her face, and the sunlight disappeared. She was on the floor, and three heads were blocking the light from shining in her eyes. 

“Do_ not _ do that again!” Haylen said angrily to Glory, shoving her out of the way. “Murphy, what happened?” 

“Not sure,” Murphy mumbled. “Did someone slap me?” 

“You were fucking _ out _ of it, dandelion,” Glory admitted, peering down at Murphy in concern. “Soon as we turned the lights on, you booked it down the stairs like you were chasing a ghost. We all thought you were gonna fall, but then you made it to the bottom and just stood and stared at that door over there while your pulse skyrocketed. _ Then _you sort of passed out.” 

“Stairs? Door?” Murphy tried to get up, but her knees refused to bend. She leaned around Haylen’s legs to see a hallway ending in a red door hung with severed chains, then twisted around to catch sight of the foot of the grated staircase. It led down from the railing where she had just been standing, at least a hundred feet up. 

Maxson was seated on the bottom step of the stairs, Final Judgment at his feet. He was muttering things into his radio, too quiet to make out. 

Desdemona followed Murphy’s gaze. “He doesn’t think you can continue,” she said in a low voice. “What did you see?” 

Murphy rocked forward and grabbed her knees. “I should talk to you. Alone.” 

Despite Glory and Haylen’s protests, Desdemona directed them to where Maxson was sitting across the room. She laid her rifle on the ground and sat down elegantly next to Murphy. “Alright. Start at the beginning.” 

She listened carefully while Murphy described the two Railroad agents and their encounter from years ago, but not once did her composure drop. Unlike Haylen, no tears were shed. Not when Murphy mentioned the farm, Deacon, or even her dead spouse. Instead, when the story was finished, Desdemona nodded and looked thoughtful. 

“It was 13 years ago,” she said. “A Courser and some Gen 2s came from the south. They surprised us, and when they were done, they left the way they had come. Watts- or as you know her, Nike- offered to track them down for HQ, once they’d gotten me to safety, but she couldn’t find their trail after a certain point.” 

She frowned. “I had assumed it was because they had relayed away, once you had discovered their ability to teleport. But we were remote, the nearest settlement was miles away. Even that prison, or whatever it is, was out of earshot. They could have just relayed in, if they knew where she was.” 

“Wait, wait, where was this?” Murphy brought her Pip-Boy map up and offered it. Desdemona scrolled around until she pinpointed a location marked _ Parsons Creamery. _

“Look,” she said, tapping the screen. 

Murphy nodded. South of the farm, all roads connected to Highway 1, which ran right down to the quarry they were all sitting in. “Maybe they took the old-fashioned way. But why?” 

Desdemona shrugged. “Does it matter? Maybe the relay hadn’t been installed here yet. Maybe it was broken, or undergoing maintenance. The important thing is, it suggests your visions are right. There is a manual entrance, and you’re on the right track to finding it.” 

She stood, then offered her arm to Murphy. Murphy took it, and when she was on her feet again, Desdemona squeezed her hand. “Tell no one. Few people know where I came from, and I’d like it to stay that way.” 

Murphy squeezed her hand back before dropping it. “Why did you keep your real name?” she asked. “If they let you join, why didn’t they make you choose a code name, like I had to?” 

The older woman gave her a rare smile, wistful at its edges. “Because after Mariah died, there was no one left for my name to endanger.” 

Above them, the quarry let out another rumbling groan, echoing against the walls of the pit. Everyone looked up, then at each other. 

Maxson set down his radio and rose to his feet. “Anything?” he asked Murphy. 

She shook her head, frustrated. “Nothing substantial yet, but I’m getting closer. I think… I think that maybe the fewer people I have with me, the better I’ll be.” 

It was a counterintuitive suggestion for strategists attempting to infiltrate and storm a stronghold, and she received looks of confusion and skepticism from Maxson, Desdemona and Glory. She pressed forward anyway. “I don’t know how to explain this. Up there, I saw Rothchild’s past because I was focused on him. I saw Haylen’s past because I was focused on her. I saw… the Railroad’s past, because I was focusing on Desdemona. I think that pattern might continue, if I have people around me to distract me from trying to focus on this place.” 

“We’re not cutting our numbers down any further,” Maxson replied, shaking his head. “We don’t know what kind of resistance to expect at this entrance, should we find it.” 

“I agree,” said Desdemona. “But she may have a point. Three instances may not be enough to establish a firm pattern, but if I saw Gen 2 synth activity at a particular location on three occasions, it would be enough to convince me to alter my plans.” 

She turned to Maxson. “Your squads and our men are still following, aren’t they? If need be, Glory and I can fall back to join them. I trust Charmer’s judgment, and we’ll be right behind you.” 

Glory looked at her superior like she’d lost her mind. “Dez, this is the Institute. You don’t know what they’re capable of.” 

“Their capabilities don’t concern me, Glory,” Desdemona said firmly. “They had ample time to attack the occupying Brotherhood forces while they were here, and they didn’t. Aside from destroying the robot, they apparently feel secure enough in their concealment not to act.” 

Maxson’s eyes narrowed. “Apparently. Still, I have to insist that one of you remain with us.” 

The air fell silent, and Murphy looked rapidly between faces. Maxson was staring daggers at Desdemona, who was returning his gaze with a hard poker face. _ He doesn’t trust her, _ she realized, thinking back to the fall of Liberty Prime and her suspicions about who had orchestrated it. _ He doesn’t want them to leave because he thinks they’re leaving us for some ulterior motive, like stranding us down here or sending us into a trap. Would Desdemona actually try to do something like that? _

Glory still looked confused, and Haylen was digging around in her pack, extracting needles and bandages in search of something, ignoring the tension. Murphy cleared her throat. “I’ll go on alone.” 

Haylen snapped her head up. “Murphy, you can’t. Someone has to monitor your vitals and make sure you’re not running over cliffs.” 

“Not _ alone _ alone,” Murphy said quickly. “I’ll just get a head start, maybe a minute, and if I need help, I can use a radio to let you know if I see anything. I promise I won’t move, I’ll just sit down and let it play out. Please, I think it’ll work.” 

_“You have no idea how good you’ve got it down here,” _said a girl’s voice in the shadows. Murphy stopped her plea and swung her head around wildly, looking for the source. 

_ “What the hell do you mean?” _ another girl answered, livid. _ “Take a look around! If we weren’t dying down here before that night, we’re definitely on our way now. How much worse could it be if we tried to leave? There has to be something out there worth finding, Elizabeth.” _

There were two figures in the shadows behind Glory, slender with youth and bent together in heated conversation. Murphy swallowed and held a hand up. 

“There’s more out there than we ever imagined, Amata,” a very young Elizabeth Titus said softly, crossing her arms. The ghost of a vault interior crept in around her, familiar outlines darkening against the marble walls. “Good, bad, and in-between.” 

“And all this time, we’re living in a tiny world that’s been falling apart for two hundred years,” Amata said bitterly. She had to be close in age to Elizabeth, a teenager with hazel eyes, a tight, dark ponytail and an air of authority about her. She was searching Elizabeth’s face for something. 

“If we don’t take a chance out there, we’re just going to die down here. But none of that can happen while my father’s got the place locked down.” She reached out and touched the Lone Wanderer’s arm lightly, familiarly. “Please. Something has to be done. You know that better than anyone.” 

Elizabeth put her hand over Amata’s. “You’re not including yourself in the ‘we,’” she said. 

“What?” 

“You don’t actually want to leave Vault 101.” 

“It… it’s not that simple,” Amata stammered. “It’s our home, and we-” 

“No.” Elizabeth shook her head. “I’m not talking about the rest of the vault, I’m talking about you. What do _ you _ want, Amata?” 

“I want what’s best for us, and my father-” 

“You can’t even say it, can you?” Elizabeth threw her head back in dismay, her curls bouncing as she did. “Can you even think about what you might want for yourself? _ Fuck _ the vault, fuck everyone else, what do you, Amata Almodovar, want to do?” 

“This isn’t about me!” Amata snapped. “Elizabeth, we need to do something or we’re just going to be another mass grave in the wasteland. You got my message, you came all this way, was it just to try to get me to abandon everything and follow you into the sunset?” 

“You’ll put an SOS out for me to risk my life, but you won’t give me your honest feelings when I ask for them?” Elizabeth ran a hand up into her mohawk. “When I asked you to come with me, that day I left, you said you were tempted to. I guess _ that _was a lie. Was there anything else you lied to me about, for the 19 years we were stuck in here together?” 

_ “Of course _ I was tempted!” Amata cried suddenly, interrupting the accusations. “A great big world right outside that door, and you with your hand out like you knew how it would end? _ Of course _ I wanted to come with you! God, I spent _ weeks _ wondering if I made the right decision. But you know what? I _ know _ I did, because someone had to think about what the future would hold, and god knows it wasn’t going to be your dad, or my dad, or _ you. _ If you really cared about what I want, you’d be _ helping, _ instead of leaving us to our fate.” 

Murphy could tell, as soon as the words left Amata’s mouth, that Elizabeth was cowed. The two girls stared each other down, but the Lone Wanderer looked away first. 

“I’m not leaving you _ or _ the vault to its fate,” she said, walking past Amata’s right shoulder and into the shadows. “Just give me some more time.” 

The two figures and the vault dissipated, and Murphy let her hand drop, staring at the space they left behind. 

“What was it?” Haylen asked her. 

Murphy looked at Maxson before she could stop herself, then turned away. “Nothing… useful. Please, let me just try to do this on my own.” 

He kept looking at her, even after she’d dropped her eyes. Finally, he nodded. “One minute. Go. The way should be clear to the fourth station. We’ll be right behind.” 

Murphy nodded, and she had grabbed Glory’s radio and was through the red door before anyone could change their mind. 

She could feel all of her limbs growing heavier, weaker, but she made her way down a gravelly slope between rusted ceiling supports to a rough-cut archway. The rock sloped up again, and she put a hand on the wall to steady herself, her breaths ragged in the dusty silence. 

_ “Uh, Elder, there’s a… dog headed your way. Moving fast. Over,” _ a bewildered voice said on the radio. 

Murphy ignored it. A metal grating came up against her feet, and she had just passed up a broken forklift at the top of the ramp when the white light flashed up around her again. Exhausted, she sank to the ground. 

The quarry reappeared, but warmer, the lights yellow instead of white. Three men in construction helmets and safety vests were gathered in front of her. One was tinkering with a circuit breaker while the other two watched, one seated in the forklift she had just passed, the other leaning against the marble wall. 

“That should do it,” the one at the breaker said, wiping his hands. “You can tell Shoots that he can shut the lights off when he leaves today, the switch should be working again.” 

He flipped the lights on and off a few times to demonstrate before leaving them on and slamming the lid of the circuit breaker shut. “Good as new.” 

The worker leaning against the wall sighed and crossed his arms. “That support still concerns me, though. Shoddy welding like that, it’s not going to hold up under stress.” 

“What stress?” asked the man in the forklift. “This is a closed site, and we ain’t got earthquakes like they do on the west coast.” 

“Water, Jim,” the electrician said, stepping forward to cuff his coworker lightly on the helmet. “Don’t worry about it so much, though, boss. Corporate’ll be replacing all of these next year.” 

He and the others disappeared in a flash of light, leaving Murphy on the ground, staring at the beam in question. It was rusted beyond belief, and as she followed its length up to the ceiling, the rocks it was bolted into shifted ominously. 

Murphy pulled her radio out. “We have a problem,” she said quickly. “This support beam’s about to collapse. Over.” 

Maxson’s response was immediate. _ “Get out of there, Captain.” _

Murphy struggled to her feet, willing her legs to cooperate. She pocketed the radio again and was about to turn back when she spotted a familiar figure in the distance beyond the beam. 

Nate was leaning against an enormous slab of marble, arms crossed. As she stared at him, he jerked his head over his shoulder, then turned and walked into the darkness. 

Murphy froze, watching the back of her dead husband disappear. The iron beam screeched and shifted slightly, and she glanced up at it. 

“Motherfucker,” she said, before staggering forward after him. 

Chunks of rock began to fall around her, shattering into smaller pieces as they hit the ground. Murphy kept her eyes forward, concentrating on making her muscles do what she wanted them to. There was white light creeping in around the edges of her vision, but she fought it off, fought her way forward, not knowing whether Nate was leading her to her destination or her grave. 

A boulder fell on her left, and she instinctively dove away from it, landing hard on her side. Rock chips rained down from its impact, and she crawled blindly, the radio in her coat squawking with the voices of her friends. 

There was a hand on her back, under her right arm, and she was on her feet again, being dragged forward while marble fell in torrents, dust clouding her vision. She coughed and gasped for breath, but her rescuer pressed her down and laid their own body over hers, shielding her from the collapse. The lights went out. 

When the quarry had stilled, Murphy heard heavy breathing and felt the weight lift away. She shook rock chips off and pulled herself into a sitting position. _ “Shit.” _

Something clicked, and a light turned on. Arthur Maxson stood over her holding a flashlight. Dogmeat was panting happily at his side. 

“Are you hurt?” Maxson asked, crouching down next to her. 

Murphy coughed again and wiped some gravel off of his battlecoat. “I’m okay.” 

He nodded and straightened up again, pointing the flashlight at a newly-piled jumble of rocks where Murphy had just been lying. “You’ve buried us.”


	2. Who Have Been Shattered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Maxson and Murphy have it out in the dark.

The flashlight beam wavered as Maxson pulled out his own radio and tested its buttons before replying to the crackle from the other side. “Come in, forward base, this is the Elder. We appear to be secure, over.” 

_ “Copy that, Elder,” _ said a relieved voice on the other end. _ “Can you describe your-” _

The voice was cut off by a fumbling sound and some cries of annoyance, before Preston Garvey’s voice took over. _ “-it back, goddammit, just let me talk. Is Captain Murphy there, Elder? Put her on. Over.” _

Murphy struggled to her feet, wincing as she did. She could already tell the side she had collapsed on would have some impressive bruising, and she didn’t even want to think about what Haylen would say when she saw the damage. Her weight and Maxson’s appeared to have been too much for her radio to handle, so she accepted the one he held out to her gratefully. 

“This is the Captain speaking,” she said. “I’m okay. We’re okay. Over.” 

_ “What happened?” _ Preston demanded. _ “We can’t see a damn thing from this side. Station three, hit the lights for a minute, turn ‘em all off. Murphy, point your Pip-Boy around, let’s see if we can’t spot you. Describe what you’re looking at while you do it. Over.” _

Murphy turned on the Pip-Boy’s flashlight, and together she and Maxson walked along the edges of the rock pile that had cut them off from the surface, shining into the cracks between the pieces and walls. Dogmeat followed one, then the other, sniffing around the nearest boulders and whining. 

The pair of them and the dog covered every inch of the rubble, shone lights into every crevice. The air was still thick with dust and there was nothing but rocks and broken, rusted iron from floor to ceiling, no matter where they turned their beams. Maxson and Dogmeat even clambered to the top of the pile, shifting bits of gravel as they went, but even then they couldn’t hear anything from the other side, much less see anything. Gradually, the optimism in Preston’s voice on the radio fell away, and the silence that settled between his responses was deafening. 

_ “I don’t know, Murphy,” _ he said finally. _ “We’ll try to shift it and dig you two out, of course, but we can’t risk explosives. And if the quarry map I’m looking at is correct, well, there’s a lot of rock between you and us. Could be days. Over.” _

The cavernous quiet was replaced by an even more unwelcome sound: Head Scribe Rothchild’s disappointed tone. 

_ “Elder, how much air do you think you have? What supplies between the two of you?” _ he asked, somehow managing to sound like both a livid superior officer and an irritated parent. _ “Tell me you spent more time thinking about what to stuff in your pockets than you did about following that woman into a death trap. Over.” _

“Air we aren’t lacking in,” Maxson replied, glancing at the quarry’s high ceiling and path that fell to darkness beyond their light beams. “Stand by for inventory. Over.” 

He dug around in his coat and Murphy did the same. A small pile formed between them, and when they had finished, Maxson listed its contents off for Rothchild. “Supplies consist of one half-full water canteen, one mostly-full flask of whiskey, one stick of bubblegum and one snack cake,” he said in much the same tone as Rothchild had taken with them. “Ordnance consists of one standard-issue laser pistol with 10 fusion cell rounds and four combat knives of varying size. Additional items include one radio, one Pip-Boy, one flashlight with an additional fusion cell, two stimpaks, one RadAway, a pack of cigarettes and two lighters. Over.” 

There was a pause before Rothchild replied. _ “There should be a water source at the furthest end of the quarry. Pick a spot within sight of the cave-in, but not close enough so as to be injured if it gives way again. Then settle in. Conserve your fusion cells, only use the radio for response unless absolutely necessary, and sleep in shifts. If the Institute really has an entrance hidden at the bottom of this hole, stay away from it. Do not engage. Do you understand, Arthur? Over.” _

Maxson let a long breath out through his nose and nodded. “Understood. Over and out.” 

_ “If you can’t make it until we get to you, I suggest you eat the dog. Over and out.” _

Maxson stowed the radio inside his battlecoat and crouched down to retrieve the items he had tallied up. Dogmeat sniffed each object, whuffing with curiosity, but the Elder pushed him away when he got too close. 

Murphy leaned down to grab her own things and patted the German shepherd defensively. “We are _ not _ eating my dog.” 

“As you wish.” Maxson straightened up again and shot her an irritated look. “We should find the water source the Head Scribe mentioned.” 

Rothchild’s manner had left Murphy bristling, but she swallowed her annoyance and nodded. She let Maxson lead the way, determined to keep him from seeing the wobble in her knees or the utter failure behind her eyes. 

Iron railings and platforms loomed in the dark outside the glow of their lights as they made their way deeper. The machinery’s lengthened shadows twisted into unfamiliar shapes, and though Murphy was sure they were still, their rough edges seemed almost dynamic, like living things that awoke only at the edges of your vision. Even Dogmeat seemed unnerved in this place, his white-rimmed eyes darting around from Murphy’s side. 

Maxson alone seemed unaffected, and he trudged forward through the wide cavern that had once been the quarry’s fourth workstation. A gentle, carved ramp ran up the room’s left side to a dead end and an ancient backhoe, its arm leaning precariously out into the open space. A rough archway formed beneath its jagged bucket. Maxson stalked through it without hesitation, and Murphy followed. 

The solid stone floor gave way to gravel again, and the tunnel sloped downward into a low-ceilinged walkway. From there it was a short walk into a deep, rounded room, with the same low ceiling and a broken circle of railings at its center around what looked like a puddle. 

Dogmeat padded over to the water and sniffed it before lapping experimentally. He sneezed and shook his head a bit, like he always had when drinking from an irradiated stream. Maxson approached the water as well and held his flashlight high over it with a look of distaste. 

“It will have to do,” he said in a low voice. “The Scribes thought it must have bubbled up from an aquifer, deep in the earth.” 

Murphy put a hand out to brace herself on the railing. The pool of water was maybe five feet across and dark, but not from the murkiness she had expected. It was remarkably clear, but neither her Pip-Boy light nor Maxson’s flashlight could do anything but reflect off of its surface. She shuddered involuntarily. Somehow, the utter blackness within the water was more eerie than the velvet dark all around them. 

“I can fill my canteen when we run out of purified water,” she said. “We should go back.” 

Maxson turned to her. “Why didn’t you do as I ordered?” 

“What?” 

She hadn’t expected the Brotherhood Elder to bite his tongue forever, but the unbridled anger that flooded his face was swift and breathtaking to watch. “You radioed in the collapse, and when I ordered you to retreat, you did the exact opposite. Would you care to tell me what you were thinking, Captain?” 

Murphy took a deep breath. “I can’t.” 

“Try.” 

“I can’t.” She crossed her arms. “I can’t tell you what I was thinking. I saw… I had a feeling.” 

“A feeling.” Maxson switched his flashlight off and stood rigid in the green light of her Pip-Boy. “So you, I, and your faithful friend are entombed in this quarry because you had a _ feeling.” _

“This wasn’t what I wanted to do with my week either, Arthur,” Murphy shot back. “Until this morning, I didn’t even know that what I was experiencing was more than my sanity slipping away. Anyway, I’ve had feelings before, and they haven’t steered me wrong yet. _ You’re _ the one who came crashing in with a savior complex.” 

“Would you rather I’d left you on the floor to die?” he thundered. 

“Why are you even _ in _ this quarry?” Murphy retorted. “When you said ‘send your best,’ I didn’t think you were dense enough to come traipsing down here yourself. You didn’t even _ believe _ me, up in our little meeting. You could have sent any one of your hundreds of bucketheads, but no, _ Elder Arthur Maxson _ needs to _ personally _ conduct-” 

“Did you not see Prime fall from the sky?” Maxson roared. “You and I both know that was no accident. If my own troops have been infiltrated, our greatest weapon rendered useless, then who can I trust beyond myself? What other choice did I have?” 

_ He must choose. _ The words rose in Murphy’s mind with foreboding tendrils of white light, seething in from the dark around her. She fought against them with blind rage, but the effort brought her tumbling to her knees. Dogmeat began barking. 

Maxson’s tone changed instantly. “Murphy, what-” 

But he was gone, and the blank nothingness swirled in her head until it settled on a scene. The room she stood in was a pre-war courtroom, complete with wooden pews, desks, jury box and wall paneling. It looked aged, but well-kept. The marble tile of the floor was chipped but clean, and flags stood in each corner of the room. 

If it weren’t for the people filling the space and the fact that the flags were bright orange rather than red, white and blue, Murphy might have thought she had been flung all the way back to her days as a lawyer. All across the room, men and women in a variety of Brotherhood uniforms were arguing. Scribes of all ranks lined the walls and pews, most wearing robes and expressions of exasperation or fatigue. Mixed in among them were roughly a dozen Brotherhood Paladins, so denoted by the black flight suits they were wearing. They were bickering freely, with other officers and a handful of orange-suited Knights and Lancers. To Murphy’s amusement, she spotted a younger Proctor Quinlan at the stenographer’s station, typing feverishly in an attempt to record the mess of voices. 

An elderly African-American woman with a sharp buzzcut looked to be presiding over the chaos from the judge’s bench, though she seemed content to let her fellow black-suited officers argue it out rather than intervene. Her eyes were fixed on the heavy, wooden doors at the far end of the courtroom, like she was waiting for something. 

Realizing that her current position had a poor vantage, Murphy began to move through the crowd toward the seated woman, ducking around figures even though she knew they were from long ago, far away. Their conversations went on, and she caught bits and pieces as she passed through them. 

“She’s _ earned _ it,” an orange-suited girl with almond-shaped eyes and an attractive bob was saying angrily. “More than anyone else in this room can say. The water we drink, the weapons we reload, the roof over our head, it’s all there, _ still _ there, because of _ her.” _

“Oversimplification, Dusk.” The bald, middle-aged officer she was talking to shook his head. “I was there when Lyons took this place and put the roof over our heads. She’s dangerous, sure, but when it comes to the Brotherhood, she’s green, and no amount of blown-up vertibirds is gonna help her with that.” 

Behind them, two men with thick necks were shouting at each other, barely kept apart by their comrades. Their volume went steadily up as Murphy inched around them. 

“You _ know _it’s what the Sentinel would have wanted!” one of them growled, wrestling his arms free from two men behind him. With a start, Murphy realized that one of the men holding him back was Danse. 

“Put the scary bear act away,” the other man spat, flicking his long hair back over his shoulder as he did. “Your Sentinel’s dead, and not a damn one of us knows what she wanted to happen. But I doubt she wanted to leave the mole rat in charge.” 

His opponent lunged forward, but Danse and the other man pulled him back and pinned his arms again. “Cool off, Kodiak,” Danse warned. “Or Star Paladin Cross will kick you out.” 

Kodiak’s eyes went to the woman at the judge’s bench and nodded. “You ain’t worth it, Bael,” he said, his glare sliding back to the man he had been arguing with. “No fucking wonder you never made the Pride.” 

Bael and his friends stalked off toward the jury box, and Murphy took their exit as an opportunity to dash toward where Cross was sitting. She climbed up into the bench and stood as tall as she could, surveying the room from behind the older woman’s back. Snippets of arguments flew around them. 

“-not like Cross can do this forever, we should-” 

“-symbol of hope, not just for us, for _ everyone _ in the Capital Wasteland, if you just-” 

“-can’t coast on the fame of being the daughter of the guy who ran Project Purity _ forever, _ Glade, how-”

“-our future, what we _ should _ be, not just what those cowards in bunkers _ want _ us to be-”

“-call her the ‘Lone Wanderer’ for _ nothing-” _

The double doors at the far end of the room opened outward together, and a familiar woman stood between them, a mohawk curving high over her head. Cross rose from her seat and banged the gavel on the wooden desk before her. 

“Be still,” she said in a commanding tone. “Our final Paladin has joined us at last. Today, we vote.” 

One by one, the quarreling Brotherhood soldiers fell silent and turned to look at the woman in the doorway. Elizabeth Titus stared back at them, chin high and eyes red from crying. 

“There won’t be a vote,” she said, her voice broken. “I don’t want any part of this.” 

“Titus, where have you _ been?” _ An officer with a sandy mustache and goatee stepped forward. “No one’s seen you in over six months. You know what needs to happen when an Elder passes with no heir.” 

“I’ve been busy, Glade,” Titus answered vaguely. “No comms. I didn’t know about… everything until I put in at Rivet City yesterday.” 

The man with the long hair gestured at her and looked around the room. “You see? How can any of you say she has the Brotherhood’s best interests at heart?” 

“Enough, Paladin Bael,” Cross said flatly. “You’ve made your case. Let Paladin Titus make hers.” 

“I don’t have a case,” Elizabeth said angrily, emotion flooding into her words. “I don’t want this. I have never wanted this, and I will go to my grave thanking whatever gods are left that I have the sense to refuse. Would you really hand everything that Elder Owyn Lyons, that Sarah… Sarah worked for, over to the first person that offends the least of you? Who am I to you?” 

“You’re one of us,” Kodiak said, raising a fist over his heart in the Brotherhood salute. “You’re one of the Pride.” 

There were cries of _ “Ad victoriam!” _ from around the room, nodding heads, but Elizabeth shook hers, her eyes downcast. “The Pride’s purpose is to fight,” she said quietly. “And I know how to fight. But the Brotherhood doesn’t need a broken war hero. It needs a leader, something… something I know I’m not.” 

The woman named Dusk moved to stand next to Glade. “Your brothers and sisters need you, Titus,” she said. “We’ve had nothing but disagreement since the Elder was killed, and yours is the first claim that has risen above the rest. We know your pain. We feel it too, and we’re calling on you to lead us. You can’t refuse.” 

“I can and I will,” Elizabeth replied. She flicked her gaze upward again, eyes flaming. “Look around you at your own broken order. How could I fix this rift? Don’t think I didn’t hear about the fights you’ve had over the Eldership since she died, those of you who tried to climb and scheme and stab each other in the back just to wear those robes. I even heard talk of reinstating the Outcasts, your fallen angels who would crush the Capital Wasteland and its people beneath them just to get what they want. How many innocents have they killed? How many of _ you _ have they killed? How many more, that you will still sweep aside when asked to reunite? When will you realize that it’s not just _ us _who have been shattered?” 

“You cannot refuse,” Cross corrected her. “By the Oath of Fraternity you took for this Brotherhood, you are honor-bound to serve when called to. They call for you now, and we will have a vote to see if you will take up the mantle of Elder.” 

Paladin Bael, the bald man and several others murmured dissent and shook their heads, but a peculiar expression crept onto Elizabeth Titus’ face. Disbelief at first, then a dismayed breath of amusement. 

“If I may.” 

A thin voice rang out from the back of the room, and Head Scribe Rothchild pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He looked much the same as he had in Murphy’s first vision of him, while he ran diagnostics on Liberty Prime. Today, however, he looked grim and tired. 

“Paladin Elizabeth Titus, recruited into the Brotherhood of Steel in the winter of 2277, promoted to Knight in the summer of 2278 following the defeat of the Enclave at Project Purity, promoted to Paladin following victory that same summer at Adams Air Force Base,” he said, stringing the accomplishments out wearily. “Has nevertheless come so far in our ranks without having taken the Oath of Fraternity.” 

There were audible gasps around the room, even exclamations of despair. 

Star Paladin Cross’ eyes narrowed. “Is this true, Paladin Titus?” 

Elizabeth nodded. “It is. The Elders Lyons felt it was unnecessary.” 

“Unnecessary?” Paladin Bael cried. “This is against everything we stand for. She should never have been allowed to advance!” 

“Enough.” Cross held a hand up and the crowd quieted. “Elizabeth Titus, you cannot be considered for Eldership unless you agree to swear your oath. Will you accept these terms?” 

The courtroom was as silent as the quarry, and Murphy held her breath even though she knew the Lone Wanderer’s answer. 

“I will not,” Elizabeth said. 

“Then we are finished here. Paladins dismissed.” 

Cross banged her gavel once, and the room fell to chaos again. Amidst it all, Elizabeth Titus turned and walked purposefully out of the room, with Rothchild and Murphy hurrying in her wake. 

Outside was a hallway, long and bright with the same marble tiling. Elizabeth and Rothchild started down it, but the former paused and turned to look back the way she had come, revealing an angry, reddened scar on one side of her head. 

“You can come out now,” she said. 

Murphy stopped in her tracks, stared, but the comment wasn’t directed at her. Instead, a dark-headed boy with familiar blue eyes emerged from the shadow of the wooden door that led into the courtroom. 

“You’re leaving,” the younger Arthur Maxson said bitterly. 

“I am.” Elizabeth wiped her eyes and walked back to him. “It’s for the best. They don’t need me, they’re just scared.” 

_ “I’m _ scared,” Arthur said softly. 

Elizabeth ruffled his hair. “Of what? You’re tougher than everyone here.” 

“Titus.” Rothchild tilted his head toward the other end of the hallway. “It’s time.” 

The sight of Arthur in turmoil appeared to be doing what Elizabeth’s Brotherhood companions could not, but it wasn’t enough. Tears welled up in her eyes again, and she leaned down to hug him tightly. 

“I’ll miss you, little pilot,” she said, pulling back to look him in the eye. “But we’ll meet again someday.” 

_ “Titus.” _

The boy who would be Elder looked at his feet, and Elizabeth Titus dug around in her flight suit’s pockets as she walked away from him for the last time. Murphy stayed next to the boy, listening to the footsteps as they faded away. 

At least, they should have been fading away. Instead, the echo of the steps changed, became more muffled and crunchy, and Murphy let the light of the hallway take her and spin her back into the world she had left. 

She awoke in the arms of Elder Maxson, who had lain his flashlight across her stomach to point the way ahead of him up the tunnel slope. Her Pip-Boy light swung wildly from her dangling arm, and she felt Dogmeat’s tongue on her fingers. 

“I’m back,” she said weakly. 

He stopped and looked down at her quickly, and the same fear she had just seen in his younger face was there. “Murphy. You-” 

“Collapsed.” She sighed. “Yeah.” 

He stood there with her crushed against him, breathing heavily. Murphy thought he might have been content to stay there with her against his chest, but she cleared her throat. “Let’s see if I can stand.” 

Maxson reluctantly eased her to the ground, feet first. While her knees didn’t buckle immediately, the posture change brought sharp pains along Murphy’s right side, and she hissed and put a hand to her waist. 

The Elder looked her over quickly, concerned. “You said you weren’t hurt.” 

“I’m not. Bad.” Murphy pressed fingers along her ribs, but they appeared to be intact. “Just the hazards of cave diving. Well, diving onto the floor. Of caves. Mines. Quarries. I’m okay, really.” 

Maxson put a hand out hesitantly. “May I?” 

Murphy shrugged and unbuckled the chest piece of her combat armor. She pulled her Red Rocket t-shirt up along her right side and turned toward him, unable to stop herself shivering in the cool dark of the quarry. 

His fingers were warm, like they always had been, and delicate as they felt along the edges of her blooming bruises in the glow of his flashlight. “You could use a stimpak,” he murmured. “The Rebound will have left you vulnerable.” 

Murphy shook her head and dropped her shirt again. “Save it. I’ll live. Even if my immune system is compromised, I should be okay as long as nothing broke skin.” 

A thought struck her, and she held her intubated arm up. “I forgot to take it out. Can you help me?” 

Maxson answered by reaching his arm around to the back of her belt and unhooking the piping at its source. “Best to stop the chem usage, if the Institute has us cornered,” he said gruffly, winding the tube around his hand until he reached the needle in her elbow. Murphy gritted her teeth when he took it out, but no blood welled up. 

“It wasn’t them,” she replied, accepting the looped plastic and tucking it in her pocket. “No one to blame but pre-war safety standards.” 

He searched her face, doubtful. “You saw this?” 

“I did.” 

“Just now?” 

“No.” She shook her head. “Before the ceiling fell in.” 

“Then why did you run in the wrong direction?” 

She could see that he had collected himself, that he wasn’t trying to rekindle their argument, but Murphy still didn’t have a good answer for him. She looked away. “I… I saw something else.” 

“You could have died.” 

“I know.” Murphy took a deep breath. “It’s thanks to you I didn’t. I’m sorry. But still… thank you.” 

He was silent for a moment, the flashlight beam wavering on the ground before him. 

“You would have done the same for me,” he said. “You already have.” 

They fell silent again and made their way back up the slope to the station four cavern, Dogmeat trotting ahead. Murphy’s feet were uncooperative, and when she stumbled, Maxson took her arm. She let him. 

“Your Gatling laser,” she said to him apologetically, when they were back in sight of the pile of marble they had narrowly escaped. “Is it…” 

Maxson shook his head. “Left behind. Your canine companion passed us, and the fastest way to follow him was without it.” 

“Dogmeat.” Murphy smiled and crouched down to pet the German shepherd. “But why did you chase after him?” 

“I’ve never seen a dog rush so swiftly into darkness, and I doubt I will again,” he answered, casting a look of respect at Murphy’s would-be savior. “I was positive he knew something I didn’t, so I followed.” 

Murphy tipped Dogmeat’s chin up and looked into his eyes. “You go where you’re needed,” she said softly, before looking up at Maxson again. “We’re even, now. I got that assaultron off of you, and you kept me from being crushed.” 

Maxson smiled faintly. “You and I are beyond simple debts, I think.” 

Talk of debts brought memories of her last few days with MacCready to Murphy’s mind, and she sank down further to sit on the ground. _ Come back to me, _ he’d said. She owed him that, owed Duncan and Shaun and all the rest that, and she had run in the opposite direction anyway. 

One by one, she pulled off her pieces of combat armor, chucking each piece as far as she could. They clattered against the marble, rocked and rolled beyond the light of her Pip-Boy, and when she was done she switched her radio on and turned the tuning knob to and fro. 

Maxson frowned. “You should conserve-” 

“It doesn’t die,” she said. “Never has. Probably never will, unless I take a super sledge to it.” 

She found Diamond City Radio, and Travis Miles’ voice cut in. _ “-can confirm that our favorite vault dweller is involved, though to what extent we still don’t know. While we wait for details, here’s Santo & Johnny, with their timeless hit “Sleep Walk.” _

The steady bass and the crooning steel guitar filled the empty space, and Murphy put her head in her hands. After a moment, there was a scrape and a thump on either side of her. She looked up to find Maxson seated on her right, Dogmeat snuggling up to her on her left. 

“I made a mistake,” she said. 

Maxson said nothing, but he put his arm around her. Murphy leaned into him and cried.


	3. Folded Inward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we emerge from quarantine.

It was the darkness that got to Murphy first. 

The glow of the Pip-Boy, and of Maxson’s flashlight when he decided to switch it on, illuminated their little campsite by the cave-in but couldn’t seem to reach past its boundaries. The shape of Maxson’s battlecoat rolled up on the floor, the line of fur along Dogmeat’s back, the single boulder that had bounced further away from the rubble than any of its companions all stood out in colorless outline, but beyond them the light was swallowed by the utter black of the quarry. An island alone in a shadowed sea. 

When the purified water ran out, they walked together to the pool at the end of the tunnel to refill Murphy’s canteen as needed. Even Dogmeat stuck close to their sides on these little trips, and Murphy couldn’t tell whether it was out of concern for her or out of fear of the twisted machinery that loomed around them, observers that you couldn’t quite make out the shape of. There was no sound, no creak or clatter or rumble within the earth, but the deafening silence was enough of a message to warn them that they were trespassing in this hidden place. 

And silence was all there had been, since Murphy’s sobs had worn down to hiccups. Though Maxson had offered her his shoulder, he’d withheld any more words, and Murphy knew better than to press him. Even if their argument, their shared stream of pain had stopped, the feeling was there, hanging with the dust in the air. It was her fault they were trapped down here, and there was nothing she could say or do that would undo it. 

Even the increasingly bleak radio updates from the Minutemen and the Brotherhood sounded muffled, both the quality of the audio and the sound of the voices on the other end. Head Scribe Rothchild seemed beyond exasperated when he suggested that Maxson send the bulk of the Brotherhood forces back to the airport with Liberty Prime’s crumpled frame. 

_ “We need engineers more than we need soldiers, given your current predicament,” _ he said, the radio’s crackle making his words even more clipped and judgmental. _ “Let me give the order on your behalf and we’ll clear out all personnel unnecessary to maintain our position or assist in excavation. Over.” _

Maxson sighed heavily before replying. “Granted. Over and out.” 

Murphy laid on the ground and imagined she could feel the footsteps of departing Knights in power armor above, the whir of the vertibirds’ rotors. Even if she closed her eyes, though, she couldn’t feel a thing but cold marble. 

Preston perked up a mite once the Brotherhood force had diminished in size, and he informed Murphy that the Minutemen were camped out on the hill and working in shifts with the Scribes to dig out the rock. When she asked about the Railroad, however, she heard frustration in his tone. 

_ “They’re still here. Over.” _

“But? Over.” 

_ “But they’re just… waiting.” _

It wasn’t like Glory or Desdemona hopped on the radio to give an update, so Murphy was left to speculate. In the end, she decided that they were simply biding their time until whatever was left of the Institute showed itself, and the two people and dog trapped in the rubble were not their problem. If anything, they were bait. 

But the rock remained stubbornly, oppressively quiet, even if Murphy found herself wishing that synths would pour from the walls and give them some kind of relief. From the radio chatter, she knew the rescue teams were trying everything: Leverage, pickaxes, even a robot or two, but the wall between them and the outside world remained unmoved. 

Maxson paced. He prowled the outer edges of their island of light, even took his flashlight and examined the ancient backhoe’s machinery and rusted control panel, but nothing satisfied him. Finally he began to pull rocks apart and shift gravel at the cave-in site. Murphy joined him until the violet blossom of her bruises became too painful and she had to curl up with Dogmeat and grit her teeth against the pain. Instead of telling Maxson, however, she lit a cigarette and prayed to the ember at the end of it that something would set them free. 

The pain dulled into an ache, and the hours dulled into indistinguishable days. At some point they shared the snack cake while Dogmeat whined. Murphy let him have part of her half, and she gave Maxson the stick of bubblegum. 

If it wasn’t for the pool of water, Murphy knew they would be in much worse shape than they were, but drinking irradiated water had a way of making your body cry out for better sustenance and hunger was quick to set in among the three of them. Maxson stopped digging and pacing to conserve energy, and the silence between them continued to grow. 

Diamond City Radio must have persuaded someone on the surface to spill the beans about what was happening in the quarry, and Murphy listened closely to Travis’ broadcasts when they came through to see if she could glean any more information about their situation. 

_ “It’s been roughly three days since everyone’s favorite vault dweller Murphy and the Brotherhood’s very own Elder were buried in a landslide of loose rock at a quarry just west of Salem, along with a dog and, supposedly, surviving Institute scientists,” _ the DJ said during one of his morning news bulletins. _ “Former Minutemen general Murphy and Elder Arthur Maxson are in contact with Minutemen, Brotherhood and Railroad forces onsite, who gathered at Dunwich Borers following a disagreement over who should be allowed to take the lead on attacking the buried stronghold. While there have been no confirmed sightings of Institute survivors, Publick Occurrences’ intrepid reporter Piper Wright is on the scene and will be relaying new information for you listeners as she gathers it. In other news…” _

“Tell her to grab a shovel and help get us out,” Murphy muttered, turning down the volume on the Pip-Boy. Suddenly, she couldn’t stand the sound of Travis’ voice, and she scrambled to her feet and walked over to the pile of rubble imprisoning them. 

“Move!” she yelled at the chunks of marble. 

The rocks did not reply. Frustrated, Murphy kicked the nearest boulder and came away cursing with a bruised toe. The sharp pain unleashed something furious inside her. 

“What more do you _ want?” _ she cried out, her voice echoing around the open space. “Ever since I crawled out of the vault, I’ve been paying for what I did to make the world what it is. My husband, my s- my _ son, _ friends and family and nights and days and so much _ blood _ on my hands, and now that I’m finally starting to find some new happiness, you start making me question my sanity, pull me away from what could’ve been home, from a man who loves me and children who need me and people who trust me and trap me in here to starve with the best dog I’ve ever had and-” 

She whirled around, finally remembering that she wasn’t alone. She found Maxson studying her in amusement. “Don’t let me stop you,” he said. 

Murphy huffed and returned to where her Pip-Boy was lying, switching off the radio and refusing to look at him. “I’m sorry. I’m just…” 

“I know.” He looked down at the ground between them. “I feel it, too. But taking it out on the rocks is fruitless.” 

She didn’t answer, and for a moment she thought the stalemate of silence would resume. When he did speak again, it was the question she had been dreading. 

“A man who loves you?” 

Murphy flared her nostrils and stared meaningfully at the nearest wall. “Yes.” 

“I hope he brings you what I could not.” 

“Don’t.” 

That ended it, and when she finally turned the radio on again to listen to some Sweet Emma Barrett and found the stick of bubblegum lying atop the Pip-Boy’s screen, she resolved to do everything in her power to get the three of them safely out of the marble pit. 

* * *

The next time Maxson fell asleep, Murphy pulled the Rebound from their pile of chems and quietly made her way to the cavern with the underground spring, feeling along until she was certain the light from her Pip-Boy flashlight wouldn’t wake him. Dogmeat followed her, silent until she plopped herself down in front of the water and cleaned the chem’s needle as best she could. The German shepherd stamped his feet in front of her and let out a concerned whimper. 

“It’s okay, Dogmeat,” Murphy reassured him as she threaded the needle into the vein of her left arm. “We’re just going to take a page out of Mama Murphy’s book.” 

The Rebound chilled her arm as it flowed into her, but she held the dispenser tab down until the glass vials and flask were empty. She pulled the needle out and threw it aside, pressing a firm hand to her elbow and waiting. 

“Okay, brain,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Give me something.” 

A flash of light blotted out the cavern, and Murphy found herself flat on her back in the middle of an asphalt road, staring up at the sun shining through yellow-green leaves. She struggled to her feet and spotted two figures, a man and a woman making their way up the road toward her. The woman was moving slowly, encumbered by the pack on her back and what looked like the late stages of pregnancy. The man was carrying a sniper rifle and was wearing a very familiar hat and coat. 

The woman stopped her advance and pointed to something behind Murphy’s shoulder. “Mirelurk.” 

Before Murphy could turn around, a bullet had whizzed past her head and buried itself into the face of the unsuspecting crustacean that was standing at the center of a broken bridge. It crumpled and fell into the high water rushing over the jagged concrete and rebar, disappearing downstream in less than a minute. 

The woman smiled. “Thanks, Bobby.” 

MacCready scanned the area with his scope before lowering the gun again. “Too bad. We could’ve brought some meat back to Canterbury Commons and thrown our own coming-home party.” 

Lucy wiped some sweat from her tan face and laughed. “I’m already carrying all of our clothes, the toaster and a baby. If you want to follow that thing downstream, fish it out and drag it the rest of the way, that’s on you.” 

She sighed and walked past Murphy to the edge of the broken bridge, where she shed her pack and began unlacing her boots. MacCready moved up next to her, looking around nervously. “We should keep going,” he suggested. 

“I’m _hot.”_ Lucy punctuated each statement with a yank on her boot laces. “We’re almost _there._ My feet _hurt._ My _ankles_ are swollen. And _you _said the water was pure, even this far upriver.” 

She shucked off her boots and socks and laid them carefully aside before dipping her toes into the current. MacCready steadied her as she sat down, and she began kicking her legs and moaning with pleasure. 

“You should try it,” she said with a grin. 

MacCready put his gun down and sat next to her, rolling his own pant legs up and removing his shoes. They splashed a little and Lucy washed her face joyfully. 

“This river is called the ‘Patuxent,’” MacCready offered. “Not sure where the name came from.” 

_ “Pa-TUX-ent.” _ Lucy sounded the syllables out absentmindedly, holding her rounded stomach. “He’s going to have trouble with that one.” 

MacCready put a hand on her belly as well. “He?” 

Lucy looked up at him and smiled. “Yeah. I think so.” 

Murphy turned away, and the darkness of the quarry flowed back in. “Not what I need,” she mumbled sadly. “Something… something else. Leave him… leave them…” 

Dogmeat whined beside her, and she walked further away from the pool and sat down again. Dogmeat flopped down too, examining her with a cocked head and perked ears. She ruffled his fur and he panted happily. 

“Just don’t let me fall into the water,” she ordered him, and he whuffed purposefully in response. 

Murphy closed her eyes and tried to let it in again, tried to listen to the chem in her veins. It still jolted through her roughly, and an image crackled together and stuttered her breathing. 

The sun was low in this vision, red and mournful on the horizon. She recognized the ruins of Washington DC again, from what looked like a highway bridge vantage high above the Potomac. There in the distance was the Washington Monument, and the Jefferson Memorial, water pouring out of it into the river. Post-Project Purity, then. 

There was a sniff next to her, and Murphy jumped. Standing on the sidewalk, looking at the same sunset, was the boy who had watched Paladin Elizabeth Titus walk away from the Brotherhood, whom she had lovingly called “little pilot.” 

Murphy stood, spun and looked in all directions, but the 12-year-old Arthur Maxson was alone. She was momentarily amused and impressed by his ability to elude his handlers even at this young age, but the feeling passed quickly when she saw that his blue eyes were red from crying. 

She watched in disbelief as he took off his coat, a miniature prototype of the battlecoat he donned in the present, then his boots. He folded the coat purposefully and set his boots atop it, sniffling the whole time and nodding like he’d made some kind of decision. When he scrambled atop the concrete barrier that bordered the edge of the bridge, Murphy’s heart jumped to her throat. 

“No,” she whispered, instinctively moving to pull him back, but she wasn’t there. No one was there, and the future Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel was alone in this moment forever. 

As he stared at the river’s water passing far beneath the bridge, tears began to flow down Maxson’s face again. His body wracked with sobs, and he covered his face in his hands. Finally, he climbed back down and folded inward, crouched next to the barrier with his arms wrapped around his knees. 

“Come _ back,” _ he pleaded to the empty bridge. 

She knew she wasn’t there, but Murphy couldn’t help but join him on the sidewalk, sit down next to him and feel tears come to her own eyes. When she blinked them away, the black of the quarry had returned. 

She hunched over herself, dug her fingers into her tangled hair and pulled. “What _ good _ are you?” she whispered. “What good are you if you just show me the past? What good am I if I can’t figure out how this works?” 

The sting of pressure on her scalp, the cloying darkness of the pool of water and the deafening silence around her closed in, circled and focused into a moment of clarity, and the words of Haylen and Desdemona regarding her visions of them came back to her. 

_ You might even say that day was what brought me here. _

_ Few people know where I came from, and I’d like it to stay that way. _

Murphy closed her eyes. Maxson’s memory of the Brotherhood coming together to nominate Titus to be their new Elder, his breakdown on the bridge, MacCready and Lucy’s quiet moment before parenthood, Titus’ memory of a girl in a vault who elected to stay behind. They were turning points, all of them, each moment altering their courses and bringing them closer to… something. Was that it? 

“What brought me here?” she asked out loud, no longer whispering. Even as she said it, she knew there were a million answers: Nate, her son, the Institute. The Minutemen, the Railroad, the Brotherhood of Steel. The man further back in the quarry and a man who was waiting for her somewhere up above along with a broken world she’d grown to love. Her own goddamned hubris. 

She threw her head back and cried out to the rock ceiling anyway. “What brought me to this place?” 

Whatever took hold of her eyes and mind this time was gentler, a white glow that was already upon her by the time she realized it was happening. 

“Sure I can’t convince you to go swimming?” 

It was Nate’s voice, and it was Nate’s face that materialized, looking lovingly upon a younger version of herself, resplendent and pregnant in a sunbathing chair beside the Boston coast. It was windy, and Murphy watched her own ginger hair whip up in a gust that swept down the sandy beach. 

“Not likely,” she heard herself say. “With all the talk of nuclear waste pollution I’ve heard about the water table around here, you’ll be lucky to get me to splash in a puddle.” 

The details flooded back to her. Their first wedding anniversary, the doctor’s orders to relax and get some sun, Nate’s insistence that they take a day to visit Carson Beach before the tourists came and clogged it up for the season. She watched her husband roll his eyes and begin to reapply sunscreen to her back and midriff, careful to curl red strands out of the way as he did. 

When he was done, he took his wife’s face in his hands and looked at her with a love that made Murphy’s heart ache. 

“Pretty please,” he said in that special, lilting tone he used to reserve just for her. “We can get rainbow donuts from Slocum’s Joe on the way home, and I’ll let you eat five of the six.” 

Younger Murphy smiled and stood with considerable effort. Together they walked hand in hand to where the waves were rolling in, the sound of the water and wind swallowing the long-gone century until all that was left was the dark and the woman who had once been that blissfully happy girl. 

Murphy nodded. “Okay. I think… I think I get it.” 

She stood, knees wobbly, and walked to the railing that encircled the underground pool. The water was still dark, the light from her Pip-Boy still unable to penetrate its surface, but three tries had given her as much of an answer as she was going to get. Slowly, she stripped off her boots, socks and jeans, until she stood barefoot in her Red Rocket t-shirt and underwear. She tied her hair back and checked that her Pip-Boy was strapped securely to her arm, flashlight on, before looking down at Dogmeat. 

“Don’t wake him up unless you think you need to,” she said. 

Dogmeat scratched an ear and looked back at her, his face unreadable. Murphy felt her way around the railing, careful not to slip on the rocks, until there was nothing between her and the black water. She took a few deep breaths, then dove in. 

Her eyes stung from the radiation when she reopened them, but Murphy fought through it, kicking as hard as she could to feel out the depth of the water. It was round, almost like a cistern, and her flashlight illuminated the walls on either side easily but failed to reach the bottom. She kept going until the green beam flashed over a familiar object. 

Murphy paused and examined the top rungs of what looked like an extendable ladder. She tugged on it experimentally, and with a creak it began to move, rising toward the upper cavern. Murphy helped it along until her head broke the surface, and she gasped for air. 

Dogmeat barked as she did, and she shushed him. There were hooks on the ladder’s end, and she dug them into the rock around the pool as securely as she could before diving again, using the rusty metal as a guide to bring her to the bottom quickly. 

Her light fell on what looked like a giant, carved stone face at the bottom of the shaft, and she drew close to it, Murphy gasped and released a bubble of air. The features were familiar to her, and fear gripped her heart and lungs. She abandoned the dive and shot back up again, catching a glimpse of a passage off the main chute as she rocketed upward. 

This time when her head broke the surface, Dogmeat was accompanied by Maxson, who was pointing his flashlight at her with a look of frustration and disbelief on his face. 

_ “Captain,” _ was all he managed to say before Murphy climbed out of the pool with the ladder’s help and began to wring out her ponytail. 

“This so-called ‘aquifer’ has a six-foot carving of my dead son’s face at the bottom of it,” she said, cutting him off while he took in the scene. “There’s something down there. Want to join me?” 

Maxson looked like he might explode. _ “No,” _ he rumbled. “I will _ not _ be joining you. If there’s something down there, _ I _ shall investigate it while _ you _ refrain from activities that may expose your newly-compromised immune system to shocks.” 

He held up the empty container of Rebound, before dropping it to the floor with his coat and beginning to untie his boots. Murphy crossed her arms and watched him strip down to his officer’s uniform, and he descended into the water on his own, his flashlight clenched firmly in his left hand. 

When he resurfaced, he looked confused. “There’s a room with… faces. An altar.” 

“Faces like the one at the bottom of the main shaft?” 

He nodded, smoothing his wet hair out of his eyes. “All of them are carved from marble. The room appears to be a dead end.” 

Murphy furrowed her brow and climbed back into the water. “It’s not. Let me look.” 

Maxson tried to prevent her from diving, but she slipped past him and headed back down. She ignored her son’s aged face when she neared it and turned to the left. There was indeed a raised dais with an altar upon it, presided over by a row of giant marble faces. There were six in total, two unknowns on either side of a pair of faces that Murphy also recognized: Dr. Hermann Zimmer, and a woman beside him that looked exactly like the Courser Chase from Far Harbor. 

_ Gabriella Zimmer, _Murphy remembered, and she drifted toward the woman whose death had led to her husband’s banishment from the Institute. 

She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to find Maxson treading water, gesturing upward as if to order her to surface again. Murphy shook him loose and ignored him, letting her Pip-Boy light dance over the long-dead woman’s face. She looked serene, her features carved carefully where the rest of the busts were rough. Her long hair was pulled up in a bun and a crack had formed in the crease between the topknot and the crown of her head. 

Murphy eyed the crack suspiciously. No, not formed._ Carved. _ She cast her eyes around the room. Her gaze fell on the altar, where a single, oddly-shaped sword lay in repose. She seized its handle and pressed the blade into the crack atop Gabriella’s head, until it slid into place with a barely-audible click. 

Hidden machinery in the room groaned, and the Zimmer busts rolled up toward the ceiling, revealing another passage behind them. Murphy grabbed Maxson’s wrist and directed him back the way they had come, eager to catch another breath before proceeding into the unknown. 

They surfaced together and gasped, breathing hard while Dogmeat scrambled around the outside of the pool whining. 

“Do you think the laser pistol and the radio will still work after a swim?” Murphy asked. 

“They should,” Maxson replied, moving to retrieve them from his battlecoat at the edge of the pool. All traces of anger or resentment he may have harbored were gone now, replaced by exhilaration and maybe even hope. He handed her two of the four combat knives and counted out the remaining fusion cells as he loaded them into the gun. 

“Eight shots,” he said, clipping the weapon to his officer’s suit along with the radio. 

“Will it be enough?” 

“Doubtful.” 

Murphy nodded and was about to dive again when Maxson grabbed her shoulders. “Murphy,” he said. “If we don’t make it out-” 

She shook her head. “Stop. We’ll get to go home and see the sun again. I made… I made a promise.” 

Together, they dove. 

* * *

The tunnel behind the Zimmer busts was narrower than the main shaft had been, forcing them to swim single file. Maxson beat Murphy to it and led the way, his strokes practiced and strong. Murphy struggled along behind him, fighting the weakness that the Rebound comedown was bringing to her system with every passing second. It was all Murphy could do to kick her way upward when the corridor opened into a wide pool with a circle of light at its top, and Maxson had to fish her out as soon as she came to the surface. 

He hauled her into a sitting position and tilted her face up to his flashlight, taking her pulse at her neck and peering into her exhausted eyes. “Breathe,” he advised, and Murphy obliged. 

Though the reservoir beneath them was vast, the room they were in atop it was small. Access to the water was limited to another pool about five feet across, and Murphy guessed that the air was all that was keeping it from advancing up into where they were sitting. The marble ceiling came to a dome over their heads, and across the pool in the center of the room was a solid metal door under a sign marked _EMERGENCY EXIT._

“The carvings,” Maxson asked, pulling the laser pistol from his uniform clip and examining it. “Institute scientists?” 

Murphy nodded. “I’m guessing. Well, the two that were hiding the entrance, that’s Dr. Zimmer and his wife. Dead wife.” 

Maxson shot a curious glance at her. “And the one on the floor…” 

“Father,” Murphy said sharply. “The late director. Zimmer wasn’t a fan.” 

He grimaced. “I remember from your report. And the runaway synth’s memory.” 

Murphy shivered. The green light of her Pip-Boy was reflecting off the pool of water behind them, throwing wavy patterns on the rough marble and the puddles forming where they sat. When she felt the feeling in her limbs returning, she struggled to her feet, lurched over to the door and pressed an ear to it. 

Nothing on the other side sounded like alarms or movement, and she sighed in relief. Next to the door was a numbered keypad beneath a clear plastic covering. Murphy fumbled at the keypad, clumsily pulling the plastic shell back with her numb fingers. It looked like the Institute fusion cells in the box had long since died, their casings singed and cracked from corrosion. She popped one out and let it clatter to the marble at her feet, then pulled the connection cord from her Pip-Boy out to its full length. 

Maxson got up from where he had been catching his breath. “Captain-” 

Murphy ignored him. “Let’s see if Vault-Tec will talk to the Institute’s tech,” she muttered, before jamming the plug sideways into the open slot. 

The glow of the Pip-Boy’s screen dimmed, and the numbers on the keypad flickered. Murphy let out a weak cry of victory when they stabilized, and her limbs wavered dangerously in exhaustion. Maxson was instantly behind her, one arm around her torso, the other steadying her own wobbly, outstretched arm. 

She half-turned in his embrace to look up at him. He was still drenched from their descent into the water, but there was a fire in his chest and eyes warm enough to burn through the cold that had seeped into their clothes and taken hold of her lungs. Here was his target, the threat he had perceived and pursued up the eastern seaboard, had sacrificed resources and the lives of his people to find, just on the other side of this door. It was a fire she’d felt before, a blaze that had driven her from her vault and into the wastes in pursuit of something that no longer existed. 

And yet, they were too spent to dream of charging in and setting the place ablaze before heroically commandeering a molecular relay and emerging victorious. They were both tired and hungry, and even if they’d been at their best, there was no clue as to what they might find behind that door. The only way they would make it through would be to swallow the anger until it was absolutely necessary. 

There, in the emerald light of her Pip-Boy and the keypad numbers, Murphy gently turned her left hand over, leaving her palm up and her fingers spread. Maxson’s eyes widened at the familiar gesture before returning to her face, confused. 

“You look as if you might burst into flames,” she said, the whisper echoing in the small, damp room beneath the earth. 

They were his words from what felt like a lifetime ago, and the stiffening of his arms had to mean he recognized them. Beside the empty chapel and aboard the Prydwen the same open hand, the same acknowledgment of the other’s pain, had stilled the storm around them only momentarily, but it had been enough. Murphy could only dare to hope that it would be enough now. 

Together, they held their breath. 

White light cracked the darkness around them, and the cavern vanished, replaced by the corridor Murphy had seen in Faraday’s attempted escape. At the end with the reinforced metal door stood a figure in a long, black leather coat. _ Courser. _

Murphy ignored the fear clawing at the back of her neck and watched to see what the Institute soldier would do. The man stood perfectly still beneath the _EMERGENCY EXIT_ sign, and she cautiously approached. She was just about able to recognize the back of his head before the room vanished again, and Murphy found herself in a familiar dream. The crumbled road outside of Far Harbor was at her feet and the fog was on all sides. A figure that wasn’t Nate was beside her, but even he was obscured by a thick wall of mist, and ahead of them was the floating silhouette of the Brotherhood Elder. 

Even before not-Nate could utter it, the cryptic message came to Murphy’s mind. _ He must choose, or you will choose for him. _

She took a step forward, then another, and soon her feet were pounding against the pavement, running toward Maxson’s limp form as it rolled with the fog. She stopped just short of reaching him and looked up at his lolling head, into his unseeing eyes. 

_ Arthur. How did we wind up like this? _

Murphy reached for his hand, but before she could take it, he reached out to her and closed the distance. 

The feeling of Maxson’s hand on hers pulled her back into the waking world. The vision faded but the Elder remained, fingers laced in hers and his heat at her back. 

Murphy released the breath she had been holding. “Do you trust me?” she asked. 

He nodded. Murphy turned and typed in the code she somehow knew was correct. 4-2-2-7-4-3-5-5-2. _ Gabriella. _ With a beep the keypad flashed, and the shriek of metal on metal filled the little room above the water. 

“Follow my lead,” Murphy murmured. 

The door swung open, and a dark man in a Courser’s uniform and mirrored sunglasses met them with the business end of an Institute laser rifle. “Greetings, ma’am.” 

Murphy took a deep breath and smiled. “Hi, X6-88. Long time, no see.” 


	4. Playing God

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we get a look at the women behind the marble curtain.

“Do you… remember me?” 

Murphy barely breathed as the Courser with the laser rifle pointed at her face pursed his lips. “I know who you are, ma’am. You are expected by the Directorate.” 

“The Directorate.” Murphy swallowed. “Right. I mean, have we… you and I… met.” 

X6-88’s expression was unreadable. “You are expected. Surrender your weapons.” 

Murphy felt Maxson tense behind her, and she turned to give him a shake of her head. She gave X6-88 her two combat knives. Reluctantly, Maxson handed over the laser pistol but only one of his knives. Murphy bit her lip when he didn’t produce the fourth, but she said nothing as X6-88 tucked everything into his black leather coat. 

“Come,” he ordered. 

They shuffled inside, their wet movements echoing along the emergency exit hallway that Murphy was seeing for the third time, though for the first time with her own eyes. The heavy door with the porthole in it screeched as X6-88 shut it, and when it thudded closed behind them, Murphy flinched and looked down at her feet. Water was still dripping out of her t-shirt onto her bare toes, and her legs were freezing and unstable in the cool air of the underground. 

She felt a hand on her shoulder. “Are you in need of support?” Maxson asked. 

“Always,” Murphy joked half-heartedly. “But I can walk, if that’s what you’re asking. Just wish I wasn’t about to meet the Directorate in my Donna Gordons.” 

X6-88 levelled his gun at Maxson. “This way.” 

They started walking over the rough marble ground. The hallway seemed to go on forever, dim industrial lights leading them deeper and deeper into the earth. Eventually, Murphy did begin to lean on Maxson, and when she spotted a door ahead it almost brought her a sense of relief. 

Murphy opened the door at X6-88’s insistence, and her breath caught in her throat. It was the square atrium she had seen in the memory DiMA had ripped from Faraday, the high-ceilinged room hewn from polished marble with a fountain at its center. It was almost unrecognizable from the unnaturally clean space she had visited in Dr. Amari’s memory lounger. The fluorescent lights, once a shining suggestion of a false sky, were now checkered with darkness, some flickering at anxious paces. The fountain was cracked and empty of water. Potted plants were dead next to minimalist benches, some turned over as if kicked in anger or knocked aside in haste. The doorways leading off into unknown corridors were yawning and empty, but Murphy could’ve sworn she heard distant whispers and footsteps from a few of them. 

X6-88 ushered them toward one of these open doorways with his rifle, and Maxson nudged Murphy as they neared the gray-veined stone wall. She looked where he indicated and realized that some of what she had taken as flecks in the marble were actually burns from laser blasts. 

Down another hallway, then a right turn, and X6-88 directed them inside what looked to be a synth dormitory. It was stark and white like the ones Murphy remembered from the main Institute, with a wide, yellow stripe of paint on the wall and uncomfortable-looking furnishings bolted in place. Six beds, two dressers, three chairs and a couch. 

As they turned to look back the way they had come, a woman appeared in the doorway next to X6-88. “You will remove the rest of your belongings and give them to H3-85 for inspection,” the Courser ordered while the new synth stared blankly ahead. 

Murphy shivered violently beneath a ceiling vent blowing in stale air. She unbuckled her holster belt and Pip-Boy and noted the time as she handed them over: Nearly 11 at night. If she had to guess, they wouldn’t be meeting the Directorate until the morning. 

The Gen 3 synth accepted Murphy’s Pip-Boy and leather belt, but gestured at her shirt. “Your belongings,” she said flatly. 

“But…” Murphy looked over at Maxson, who was already unzipping his drenched officer’s uniform, the radio on the floor next to him. Reluctantly, Murphy pulled off her shirt and handed it over. 

“Don’t lose that,” she warned. The woman did not react. 

Somehow, Maxson’s concealed knife made it past this point as well, and Murphy tried not to stare at him too much as she searched for an outline in his wet tank top or boxer briefs. The synths collected their belongings and departed, locking them in behind them. 

Murphy sank into the couch and folded her limbs up around her, covering herself as best she could. While Maxson might have seen her “in all her glory” before, this place held a sense of hostility that made her feel self-conscious about her own near-nakedness. She began to feign wringing her hair out again, water dripping onto the smooth floor. Her shivering was worsening, despite no longer being within the vent’s blast radius. 

“Is there anything in…?” she asked, inclining her head toward one of the dressers. 

Maxson yanked open drawers and pulled out several white synth uniforms. Murphy accepted one that was a little loose on her, but Maxson had to search through a few more drawers before finding one that was big enough for him. The fabric was starchy and stiff. More importantly, it was dry. 

Murphy hugged her torso and tried to slow her shivering. “You look good in white,” she offered. 

Maxson grimaced and began to pace the room. He grunted in disappointment when he found the metal furniture secured to the floor, the beds devoid of sheets and the ceiling lights caged inside thin, steel bars. 

“You should rest, Arthur,” Murphy said weakly, sinking deeper into her seat. “Chances are we’re going to be interrogated tomorrow until we want to go back to being alone in the dark. Then we get to wait until they hammer out the hostage exchange details and we can s-s-s-say…” 

Shivers wracked her body, and Maxson abandoned his search for escape or defensive advantages immediately. He dropped to one knee before her and put a hand to her forehead. “You’re burning up, Murphy.” 

Murphy brushed his hand away. “I’m fine. It’s probably just the Rebound.” 

Maxson’s hand instead went to her neck to read her pulse while he peered into her eyes. “Susceptibility to infection,” he muttered. “You’ve been exposed to something, likely from the swim. You need antibiotics.” 

“Arthur, don’t-” 

Before she could stop him, he was up and pounding on the door. “The Captain requires medical attention, Courser! She needs treatment for a compromised immune system, _ immediately!” _

“Arthur…” 

_ “Courser!” _

X6-88 didn’t respond, but Maxson went on banging. Murphy’s eyelids were beginning to droop when the door finally opened. The Courser backed Maxson up against the wall with his gun, and in came another familiar face. 

“Dr. Volkert,” Murphy mumbled. 

The physician set a bag of supplies on the couch next to her and looked her in the eye. He looked dead to the world, like he’d aged a decade since the last time she’d seen him, happily labeling samples in his clinic on the Atrium floor of the Institute. Without any ceremony, he stuck a thermometer in her mouth and an ear examiner in her ear. 

Murphy stayed as still as she could while he read the results, listening to him mutter. “102.6, don’t need a biometric scanner to know that’s a bad sign… might want to… maybe for stability? No, too risky, can’t mix chems…” 

“She took a mix,” Maxson said. He strained against the barrel of X6-88’s laser rifle, but the Courser pushed him back again. “Adrenaline and Jet. She needs an aggressive antibiotic regime as soon as possible.” 

“I can see that, soldier,” Volkert barked. “More than that, she needs fluids and minerals. So do you.” 

Murphy blearily considered resisting, but she opened her mouth when prompted and swallowed the three pills Volkert gave her. “Should hold you until morning,” he said gruffly. “I’ll have H3-85 bring you some ration bars and water.” 

He gathered his things and turned to go. Before he could exit, Murphy spoke up. “How’s your son, doctor?” 

Volkert paused, hung his head, and left. X6-88 released Maxson and followed suit, locking the door once again. 

* * *

“His son’s name,” Murphy croaked later, after H3-85 had brought them purified water and some protein bars that tasted vaguely of fish oil and watermelon rind. “I think it was… Brian?” 

Maxson, who had given up pacing and trying to pry up the beds from the floor, had sat down on one of them keeping a clear line of sight to both her and the door. He looked lost in other thoughts, but he still nodded. 

“Maybe Brennan?” Murphy sighed. “I don’t know. It’s been so long. S-s-s-seven… no, eight months since we attacked. And that means a ye… a _ year _ since I lost visiting privileges in the first place.” 

That got his attention. _ “Visiting _ privileges? I was under the impression that you infiltrated the Institute as part of your mission, not as a tourist.” 

Murphy scoffed. “My mission. As if you and I had seen each other since everything that happened with Danse.” 

He grimaced. “Point taken, Captain.” 

Murphy shuddered as she drew in a breath, the tremors shaking her whole body. Maxson had made her put on a second synth uniform over her first, but the fever was taking its time to break and she still felt like the room’s temperature was sub zero. 

He noticed her shiver and patted the bed next to him. “Come. I doubt we’ll receive any blankets.” 

“Don’t want to pound on the door some more?” Murphy asked sarcastically, but she rose to join him. She pulled up short when he swung his feet up and laid out on the mattress. “Arthur…” 

Maxson huffed impatiently. “You need to remain warm. Warmth may be one of the few useful things I still possess, down here.” 

“You and I…” Murphy shook her head. “I don’t think…” 

His expression softened a tad. “If you’ve found another man who truly loves you, then he won’t mind if I take a vested interest in keeping you from perishing while we’re down here. Lie down, Murphy.” 

Murphy grumbled a bit more but she shifted onto the overly-firm twin bed and settled into the crook of his arm. At first she stared resolutely toward the ceiling, unmoving, but she couldn’t keep the begrudging attitude up once his warmth began to seep into her. 

When her teeth had stopped chattering, Maxson turned his head to look down at her. “What happened?” 

“With what?” 

“When you lost access to the Institute.” 

Murphy was silent for a bit, piecing the past together. 

“I burned my cover,” she answered finally, turning her head toward his chest. “Bunker Hill… I lost my composure and I paid for it.” 

“The Institute attack.” Maxson’s ribcage rose and fell deeply next to Murphy’s ear. “We received word but our forces arrived late. You were there?” 

“Was I.” Murphy chuckled. “I’d been… collaborating with the Institute for about a month, after the teleporter got me inside. I wanted to…” 

She sighed. “It doesn’t matter what I wanted, not anymore. I agreed to give… Father a chance, but I knew it wasn’t going to work. Maybe immediately, I don’t know. I wasn’t really trying to gather data for you or the Minutemen anymore, but Desdemona convinced me to stick it out anyway, get as many synths out as I could before giving up. I wanted to run, I wanted to leave the city, the country, the planet, but I stayed to help them. We had a plan, we were working with friends on the inside to stage a breakout, and then…” 

Murphy took a deep breath of her own. “It was a retrieval mission for the SRB, the Synth Retention Bureau. I’d done one already, that’s how I met X6-88 out there, and it was for a… a raider. Hotshot leading the group that used to be at Libertalia. I told myself it wasn’t a big deal, he was a terrible guy and putting him back in the Institute was doing the Commonwealth a favor. No great loss and all that. But the next one was… different.” 

She tried to word it as vaguely as she could to preserve the Railroad’s hidden operations at the settlement, past or present. “There were four of them. Three men and a woman. The SRB knew they were hiding at the trading post, they had squads of synths ready for fire support, they were going to send a Courser in with me, it was a done deal. I let Desdemona know and she mustered as much resistance as she could, gave me strict orders not to let any Institute agents leave Bunker Hill alive except for me. It was a mess, bullets and laser blasts flying everywhere, the fortifications all blown to hell, but the confusion gave me the opening I needed to kill the Courser and help the four escape. I made the rendezvous at CIT when it was all over and _ Father _ was there to meet me.” 

Murphy paused. She could still remember the sour look on his face when he turned, Boston spread out behind him, the wind whipping through his silver hair. Nate’s features. Her eyes. 

“He knew his mission failed,” she went on quietly. “But he didn’t ask me about it right away. He told me it was his first time aboveground since the Institute had taken him. He looked out over this world and called it _ dead. _ Like he couldn’t _ see _ past the empty skyscrapers, or the rusty boats in the river. Like that cloud of smoke rising from Bunker Hill wasn’t a sign of something that had _ been _ alive, that he’d actively tried to destroy just to get his… his _ slaves _ back. He said there was no hope left, that the Institute was the only future for humanity, and something in me… something in me snapped.” 

Murphy squeezed her eyes shut. “I unloaded on him. We had a shouting match on the roof of the CIT rotunda about everything that had happened since they took him from the vault. I don’t remember everything we said, but it came out that he’d wanted me to succeed him, take his place when he died, and I screamed about how I wanted no part of him, _ claimed _ no part of him. That he might have perfect DNA but he was the most imperfect person I had ever met. And even after that, he had the nerve to just look… disappointed.” 

She sighed again. “That was it. He and his synths relayed away, and I hopped a boat with Nick and disappeared until I couldn’t hide from things anymore. I didn’t see the Institute again until I climbed through the sewers to get to it.” 

Maxson offered no response, and Murphy felt her shivers slow alongside the furnace of his chest. She was just about ready to drift off when he finally broke the silence. “What happened to him?” 

“Who?” 

“Your son.” 

Murphy opened her eyes again. “He’s dead.” 

He didn’t press her further. They went back to staring at the ceiling, and when Murphy finally began to slip into sleep, she felt his fingers caressing her hair. 

* * *

They took Maxson first. 

The two inmates were both awake when X6-88 opened the door, though they had no idea what time it was. The Courser held a gun to Maxson’s head while H3-85 put a pair of handcuffs on him, and just like that, Murphy was alone. She tried to pace but her knees betrayed her again, and she was forced to sit down periodically amidst her speculations. 

Not only had the furniture in their converted dormitory been bolted down, the bolts that were holding each bed or chair leg in place had been welded over so as to prevent any tampering. The welding marks looked old and dull, and Murphy surmised that it must have happened before the bulk of the Institute had moved in, possibly when Dr. Zimmer was using the location as a base in his unofficial exile. Maybe he still was, and she was going to have to answer for disturbing his retirement alongside destroying the Institute’s main base of operations. 

Slowly, she went through all the drawers of the dressers again, finding only white synth uniform shirts and pants. There hadn’t been any socks, so her feet and Maxson’s were still bare, their own pairs left in piles at the edge of the cistern with Dogmeat. She and Maxson had discussed the dog in low voices that morning, but ultimately decided that they wouldn’t draw attention to him until they felt the Institute wouldn’t dispatch a Courser to eliminate the threat. In all likelihood, they already knew he was up there waiting. Still, he had to be starving, and Murphy knew that it was only a matter of time before he would try to follow her into the water. 

What sort of force the Institute had left to threaten Dogmeat- or anyone else, for that matter- was also on her mind. So far they had only seen Dr. Volkert, X6-88 and H3-85. Perhaps it was a deliberate attempt to fudge their numbers, keep them in the dark about how many people were down here, but if they were concealing a larger force, why was this room empty? The facility couldn’t be that large if it was originally meant to hold one man and his Courser units, so how could they afford to set aside an entire room with six beds? 

And why put X6-88 in charge of their security? He and Murphy had a history: Even if they had successfully wiped his mind and changed any reset codes she might have known, as Murphy suspected, wasn’t it still a risk to put them in close proximity to each other? 

And then there were the scorch marks Maxson had spotted in the atrium. Laser blasts, for sure, but from what? Had there been a scuffle, following their evacuation to this location? Maybe it was something to do with the group of synths that escaped into Salem after the Institute fell? And Dr. Volkert’s reaction to bringing up his son. Had he died in the Minutemen attack, or did something else happen? And what was his name? 

“Brandon… no.” Murphy shook her head and sat down on a nearby bed. _ “Brendan. _ His name was Brendan.” 

Brendan had rubbed her the wrong way. The young man had been demanding, unable to wrap his mind around not being worthy of another scientist’s notice in that pristine retreat fairly bursting with accumulated knowledge, and Murphy had avoided him whenever she was in the BioScience labs of the Institute. Something else stirred in her mind as she recalled- what Shaun had said at Breakheart Banks, about how Marina had a painful history with the younger Volkert, and her brow furrowed further. 

Finally, she sighed and stretched out on the bed. She closed her eyes against the invasive fluorescent light of the room and tried to tap into what she had found when under the effects of the chems. Try as she might, though, the inside of her eyelids remained stubbornly dark. 

The door opening interrupted her attempts to force a vision out of her subconscious. “Your turn, ma’am,” X6-88 said coolly, tossing her a pair of handcuffs and pointing his gun at her chest. 

“Where’s the Elder?” Murphy demanded, rising from the bed. 

“The Directorate is waiting for you, ma’am. Comply or I will have no choice but to use force.” 

* * *

There were more laser scorch marks along the corridor that X6-88 led her down, and even a few craters where larger blasts had disturbed the marble. _ Grenades, _ Murphy guessed, but she said nothing. 

Again, there was not a soul in the facility other than she and the Courser, so when she was pressed to enter a modified laboratory and found Maxson and three women waiting inside for her, her heart jumped into her throat. X6-88 made sure she was seated next to but out of reach of Maxson, and across the table from their interrogators before taking up a guard position at the closed door. 

Murphy swallowed and studied the women she was facing. She knew all of them, but if they were the entirety of the Directorate, there had been some major changes in management. Dr. Madison Li from Advanced Systems was still present, and her eyes narrowed as she stared right back at Murphy. Her expression was as severe as it had always been, but her graying hair was much less tightly-curled than Murphy remembered. Still, her position at center suggested a new leadership role. 

On the right was chief engineer Dr. Allie Filmore, whose once-blonde hair was long and unkempt with nearly as much gray in it now as Dr. Li’s. If Dr. Volkert looked as if he had aged a decade, then Dr. Filmore had matched it and gone beyond. Her eyes, once full of the spark of ingenuity, were tired and glassy now, shot through with red. Lack of sleep, or crying? 

To the left was Alana Secord of the SRB, who had apparently received a promotion since Murphy had seen her last. She had as hard a look on her face as Dr. Li, and was tapping her fingers on the table impatiently. No Ayo, Holdren, Binet, or anyone else that Murphy had expected. 

She looked over at Maxson, and he gave her a slight nod with a troubled look. Murphy had no idea what it meant, and the Institute leaders didn’t give her time to decipher it. 

Secord gave a bit of a huff and leaned back in her chair. “I still don’t think we need her here. It’s not like she’s speaking for anyone up there anymore.” 

“That does not mean she lacks value,” Dr. Li replied sharply. 

“Value beyond her bargaining worth? Please.” Secord sniffed. “The Elder over there can moan about ‘guaranteeing her safety’ all he wants, but it’s _ his _ people who are calling the shots on who leaves this quarry alive. They have all the guns, after all.” 

“Alana, you’re an idiot if you think the leader of the Brotherhood of Steel is going to give you a full picture of what might happen if we move forward with this,” Dr. Li retorted. “He’ll tell us what we want to hear, and then he’ll do exactly what _ he _ wants to do. No more, no less. At least someone like her will give us more details, however slight, to put into making our decision.” 

Murphy cleared her throat. “What details are you looking for?” 

Dr. Li let out a long breath through her nose. “I don’t anticipate you giving me the full truth of things either, but you have a right to hear our proposed arrangement as well.” 

She pointed a finger at Maxson. “First, I would remind you that while _ he _ may have the military might to dig us out should we decide to keep him as a hostage, _ you _ do not. The Minutemen and the Railroad are weak in number and supplies, and the Brotherhood have cast you out.” 

“You’re wrong.” Murphy shook her head. “They want the tech you have, and they want to make sure that synth production is stopped for good.” 

“The Brotherhood won’t spend the resources trying to get to us if we release Elder Maxson along with what little technology we have here and keep you in our custody, no matter what his personal feelings on the matter may be,” Dr. Li argued. “And, as I’m sure you can guess, any other faction’s attempts to reach us would be pointless for multiple reasons.” 

As if to emphasize Dr. Li’s assessment, Secord laid her laser pistol on the table in front of her with a pointed smirk toward Murphy. Dr. Li ignored her. “This facility was not made for the storage of knowledge beyond synth retention records. What computer access it had to the mainframes was severed when the fusion pulse charge was triggered. The little we salvaged came here in the form of holotapes, incomplete hard drive copies and personal journals. Furthermore, a significant amount of knowledge was lost in the confrontation of our own… hardships.” 

“What sort of hardships?” 

“No.” Dr. Filmore raised her head for the first time. “She doesn’t need to know that.” 

“Agreed.” Dr. Li folded her hands. “As it is, the Institute is _ generously _ willing to hand over both of you, along with its collected knowledge available at this facility, in exchange for three things: Amnesty, privacy, and a functional vertibird.” 

Murphy cocked her head to the side. “So you plan to run.” 

“Well, we have remarkably few choices in front of us,” Dr. Li replied. “Retreat is a perfectly good one. The two of you will secure that for us, and we’ll be out of each others’ hair forever, provided you honor the terms.” 

“And you’re all going to fit on one vertibird?” 

Secord frowned. “We’ll make it work.” 

“Hm.” Murphy pursed her lips together. “Gutsy. But once you make the exchange, what’s to stop the boys up top from gunning you down when you try to fly away?” 

Secord’s face brightened considerably, albeit in a rather sinister way. “You, of course.” 

“If you think I’m going to be able to stop-” 

“She means you, literally,” Dr. Li interrupted. “Physically, even. Like I said, the Brotherhood has the military might to do us some damage, and maybe the Minutemen and the Railroad would be able to bring down a vertibird, but they won’t do it if their leadership forbids them from firing because you’re on board with us.” 

She scowled when Murphy’s face turned white. “We’ll set you loose, too. A deal is a deal. But it won’t be until we’re out of range of anything that might do us harm.” 

Murphy quickly glanced over at Maxson. He was looking at the floor and shaking his head, clearly not in agreement with the idea. A dark thought arose in Murphy’s mind, and she turned back to the Directorate with a deep breath. “So you can kill me without any repercussions.” 

“Would that be so unwarranted?” Secord asked smugly. 

“Alana.” Dr. Li shot her a harsh look. “We already agreed on this. If she dies, all of our lives are forfeit. You’d make her a martyr, there wouldn’t be a person in the Commonwealth who wouldn’t drop everything to hunt us down.” 

Secord picked up her gun again and made a show of checking the chamber. “Pity.” 

“I won’t agree to these terms, Dr. Li,” Maxson growled. “You hand us over together with your research and you have my word that you’ll be allowed to leave peacefully.” 

“Again, we have more than enough reason not to take you at your word, Elder,” Dr Li said. “Holding onto her is a form of insurance. Nothing more, nothing less.” 

“And you expect me to take you at _ your _ word, Dr. Li?” Maxson held up his cuffed hands. “Forgive me for the skepticism.” 

“You’re just going to have to trust us,” Dr. Filmore explained. “This situation is already heavily weighted in your favor, and your people have much less to lose than we do.” 

“You already have most of what you wanted,” Dr Li added coldly, flicking her fingers toward Murphy. “The bulk of the Institute’s destroyed, and everyone up there thinks _ she’s _ a hero for it.” 

Something in Murphy’s blood began to boil. “I never _ asked _to be called a hero. I was just-” 

“Well maybe you should take a step _ back _ for a moment and analyze what you’ve done.” Dr Li turned on her. “The fact of the matter is that innocent people died because you two had delusions of grandeur. The Elder over there kept preaching that the Institute was ‘playing God’ for creating the synths, and you bought into some fantasy of a world where they were people just like you and me and managed to drag a whole militia in with you. Well you know what, maybe you two should take a look in the mirror, because you’re the only ones that I saw who’ve been playing God.” 

“Oh, don’t give me a lecture in morality,” Murphy spat back, leaning forward in her chair. “You don’t think the Institute needed to answer for its crimes after the bullshit that they pulled with Diamond City and everyone else? Kidnapping, murder, replacement, _ slavery-” _

Dr. Filmore slammed her hand on the table. _ “Enough! _ Those are the terms, and this isn’t up to either of you. So you feel helpless? Terrified? _ Good.” _

Everyone else in the room turned to look at her, and she buried her head in her hands. “Radio aboveground, Madison,” she mumbled from beneath them. “You don’t need their permission to negotiate, anyway.” 

Dr. Li pulled Maxson’s radio from her pocket and switched it on, fiddling with the dials until a voice came through the speaker. _ “-contact for approximately 24 hours, the emergency protocols have been put in place. Elder Maxson, Captain Murphy, if you can read us, please respond immediately. All others on this channel, please vacate until the pre-recorded message is removed. Message repeats. This is a pre-recorded message broadcast-” _

Dr. Li cleared her throat and cut into the broadcast. “Come in, Brotherhood, this is Dr. Madison Li of the Institute. We have the Elder and the Captain, over.” 

The pre-recorded message went on for about three more seconds before someone aboveground picked up. _ “Dr. Li, stand by for leadership, over.” _

The room fell silent until a familiar voice came over the radio. _ “Madison, this is Head Scribe Reginald Rothchild. It’s been far too long. I’m relieved to hear you survived your unfortunate circumstances, over.” _

The look of distaste on Dr. Li’s face deepened. “Rothchild,” she replied. “It seems we’ve rescued two of your people and a dog from certain starvation in the quarry. We should talk about getting them back to the surface, over.” 

_ “Prove it, Madison. Over.” _

Dr. Li held the radio out across the table for Maxson to speak into. “She’s telling the truth, Head Scribe,” he said begrudgingly. “The Captain and I are in their custody.” 

Secord nodded, and Dr. Li took back over. “There’s your proof, Reginald. Over.” 

_ “I see.” _ Rothchild’s disappointed sigh came through loud and clear. _ “Well then, Madison, let’s talk. Over.” _

Secord motioned toward X6-88, and the Courser urged Murphy and Maxson to stand with his rifle. The last thing Murphy saw before the door closed behind them was the look of pure hatred on the faces of all three women as they watched her leave.


	5. Pressed into the Marble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rothchild pops a blood vessel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, um... this one's a lot. Content warning for some pretty graphic violence, and also I had to go hug my s/o after I finished writing it, so make sure you're buried under blankets or nearby your pet or something.

As Murphy and Maxson were shoved back toward their makeshift cell, Murphy was relieved to hear the healthy barks of Dogmeat echoing around the hallways of the facility. The noise seemed to be coming from a room adjacent to their own, and as soon as her cuffs were off she pressed an ear to the stone wall and called out to him. 

“It’s okay, buddy,” she said, closing her eyes. “I’m here. I’m okay.” 

There were a few more resolute whuffs before the dog quieted, and Murphy couldn’t help but smile. “We’re okay.” 

Maxson didn’t seem reassured. “I have no trust in the Directorate,” he muttered as he took a seat on the couch. “This exchange they mean to orchestrate- there is no way to keep you from harm once they depart the quarry. I will not let it happen.” 

Murphy sighed. “What choice do we have? Everything Dr. Li said was right. You have most of the leverage, but you have no good reason to chase after me if they let you and their secrets go.” 

“There are plenty of reasons,” Maxson argued. “Any working relationship the Brotherhood would have with the Minutemen, the Railroad or the rest of the Commonwealth would be irreparably damaged. I’d be the Elder who traded one of their own for tech and a hollow promise that the Institute would be gone forever.” 

“And who am I, for you to throw everything away on?” Murphy replied, her voice level rising. “You don’t belong down here, you’re not the one who led an army into the heart of the Institute. To them, you’re just a temporary annoyance, but I’ll always be the woman who massacred their whole people. Maybe Alana’s right. Maybe this is my comeuppance, and maybe that will finally be the end of it.” 

“You _ cannot _ truly believe that.” 

“Of course not.” Murphy sank onto a bed. “There is no end. Like Nate used to say, war never changes.” 

She looked down at her feet. The last person she’d said that to had been MacCready, atop the Mass Fusion building while the river burned below. Some part of her wished it was him she was talking to, him telling her not to give up, but she knew that if he’d been in that cave instead of Maxson, she’d never have forgiven herself. She already felt the words he’d said to her when she left Sanctuary wrapping around her._ Come back to me. _ Her ankles ached from perpetual unsteadiness and every bone in her body was sore, but those words were the sharpest reminder of her helplessness. 

“We don’t have a choice,” she said. “We have to take the deal. I made a promise, and that’s my only chance of going home alive.” 

Maxson studied her for a beat before moving to join her on the bed. “I flew out here intending to protect the people of the Commonwealth from an unforgivable threat. That includes you, Captain.” 

Murphy shook her head. “No. You’re putting me on one end of the scale and the rest of the Commonwealth on the other. You can’t make that decision for me, it’s mine to make.” 

She felt his hand on her shoulder. “You don’t always have to do this,” he murmured, almost a whisper. “Endlessly sacrifice. Take all of the blame and responsibility. This weight isn’t yours alone.” 

Murphy just shrugged him off. “Please don’t tell me none of this is my fault. We both know it’s not true.” 

* * *

X6-88 came back for Maxson after what seemed like a couple of hours since the Directorate had kicked them out of the negotiations. The Elder protested the renewed application of handcuffs and shot Murphy a look of anxious fury as he was pushed out the door, but in the end she was left alone with the sound of Dogmeat’s yips and whines from the next room. Murphy instinctively tried to shush him, and she slumped to the floor against their shared wall mumbling reassurances to both the German shepherd and herself. He quieted again for a moment, but started up again as soon as she stopped talking. 

She jumped up when the door opened a few minutes later, expecting the Courser come to take her down the hall as well. Instead, a different man entered the room. He was a thin kid, with wild brown hair and wilder eyes atop a tattered cleanroom suit. He had a shock baton in his shaking right hand. Murphy slowly took a step back. 

“Remember me?” he asked, advancing. 

Murphy swallowed and backed up into one of the beds. She knew his face, for sure. He’d been around the few times she’d been in Advanced Systems, and once she’d spotted him at the SRB talking to Justin Ayo. She’d figured he was some sort of liaison, as it was common knowledge that Ayo and Dr. Li didn’t get along. But she didn’t know his name. She wasn’t sure she’d ever learned it. 

“No, you don’t, do you,” he said when she didn’t answer. “Figures. Why would you care?” 

“Just-” 

He swung the baton out in front of him and pressed the button that activated its electrical charge. The weapon began to hum and Murphy smelled ozone. She sat down abruptly and he bared his teeth into a sneer. 

“Your words aren’t going to save you from what you deserve,” he said softly, under Dogmeat’s frenzied barking. “So how did you do it? How did you get to them?” 

“Get…” Murphy leaned back, as far away from the end of the baton as she could get. “Get to who? I don’t-” 

The baton jabbed even closer, straight toward her throat. “Don’t play dumb with me. Liam and the others. You _ did _ something.” 

“Liam… Binet? I didn’t… I wasn’t-” 

“He said it was the _ Railroad,” _ the man went on breathlessly. “That they’d be willing to help us if we just gave up and let the synths go. Now, where _ else _ would he get an idea like that? It was _ you.” _

_ Patriot. _Murphy’s mind raced. “What happened to him?” 

The man let out a harsh, half-strangled laugh. “They didn’t tell you. Of course not. Dr. Li never could dwell on the past.” 

He withdrew his baton slightly, and his face contorted from anger into something more akin to grief. “They’re all dead. All of them. They tried to leave, and we… we killed them all.” 

_ Scorch marks. Grenade blasts. _Murphy slowly sat forward. “Who all… who all died?” 

_ “All of them,” _ the man repeated. “The Binets, Holdren, the Thompsons, Max and Newton and Nathan. Most of the synths. We lost Evan and Brendan and Isaac, but we got them all, and now we’re… we’re all that’s left. Kids without parents and experts out of their depth.” 

He leveled the baton at her again. “Because of _ you.” _

Dogmeat was going crazy in the next room, and Murphy could hear his claws scrabbling against stone as he pawed at the wall. She took a few deep breaths. “So you want justice.” 

“Justice.” The man laughed again. “I want you to _ pay. _ A year ago we were untouchable, and now there aren’t even a dozen of us, and it’s your fault.” 

The shock baton connected with Murphy’s right shoulder before she could put a hand up to block it, and the painful current jerked her body forward onto the floor. She curled up, convulsing, while her attacker stood over her. 

“I want you to _ feel _ it,” he hissed, punctuating his words with fresh jabs to her stomach, hips and legs. “I want you to _ know _ what it means, to watch your _ safety _ get taken away, watch your _ home _ get destroyed, watch people you _ love _ have their brains splattered on walls and their lives _ ripped _ from them, you fucking _ bitch.” _

Each new shock clicked in Murphy’s ears and the pit of her stomach with a searing jolt of pain. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her palms to the ground until the beating slowed and the man above her began breathing raggedly from the exertion. “I’m not done with you yet, you-” 

It was the opening she’d wanted, and Murphy braced herself and kicked out toward his legs, her joints screaming with agony as she did. The man tumbled to the floor but he didn’t drop the baton, and Murphy was on top of him in a flash, wrestling for control of its handle. 

“I already know what _ all _ of that feels like,” Murphy snarled, digging her fingernails into his hands as deeply as she could. “And you know who I have to thank for most of it? The _ fucking Institute. _ You killed my _ husband. _ You took away my _ son.” _

“You _ killed _ your son!” the man yelled. “He offered you paradise and you chose hell, then dragged us all in with you! You tore down _ everything _ he ever worked for!” 

The faces of everyone Murphy had lost along the path to this moment flooded her mind, followed by the ones that she was desperate to live for. Her fault, and her reason to fight back. She put every ounce of strength into her grip on the baton and _ pulled. _

It went flying across the room, and in her haste to pursue it she tripped on the man’s leg and sprawled out on the marble floor. He scrambled up before she could and kicked her hard in the stomach, sending all of the air in her lungs out with a wheeze. She gasped noiselessly as he kicked her over and over, landing blows on her ribs and thighs where the electrical current had already left her skin tender and the bruise from the cave-in was still healing. Murphy struggled against her own body to cry out, but she couldn’t get the air. Her vision began to swim, whiteness creeping in at the edges, and images that weren’t hers sprang into her head with each new assault. X6-88 and another Courser crouched behind hallway corners with their guns at the ready. A room full of synths in uniform, speaking furtively in near-darkness. Dr. Voelker clutching his son in his bloodied arms and sobbing. 

Murphy was right on the edge of slipping out of this moment and into another when she heard the door of the dormitory open and a mix of voices begin shouting: X6-88’s unnaturally even tone, Dr. Li, high and incredulous, and a feral sound followed by a pair of bodies slamming to the ground. Through the white haze of the unfamiliar memories, Murphy could make out her attacker’s thin frame being eclipsed by an enormous pair of shoulders and the smack of flesh on flesh. As they thrashed, the larger of the two yanked something from beneath a nearby mattress and tried to use his clasped fists to drive it into his opponent. She closed her eyes for what felt like less than a second and opened them to find Maxson on the ground next to her, his face being pressed into the marble by the barrel of a laser rifle as X6-88 picked the missing knife up in the background. 

“Get him out of here,” Dr. Li was saying to someone outside the room, clearly disgusted. “He’s done enough. Get Dr. Volkert, _ now.” _

The door closed again. Murphy shut her eyes and tried to breathe. 

* * *

When she awoke, Murphy was lying on one of the beds in the room with one wrist cuffed to the frame, Maxson seated next to her in a protective position. Dr. Li was still there, arms and legs crossed tightly as she dictated orders to Dr. Volkert. 

“I meant what I said,” she was saying. “Tell Alana that I don’t want her to let him out of her sight. If we hadn’t interrupted him, he might have blown all of our chances of getting out of here.” 

Dr. Volkert nodded and turned when Murphy shifted on the mattress. He pressed his lips together apologetically before exiting the room. Dr. Li remained. 

“I suppose William gave you some kind of speech about the attempted coup six months ago,” she said curtly. “I’m sorry you bore the brunt of his… outburst.” 

“Didn’t sound like a coup,” Murphy replied, her voice hoarse. “Sounded more like a bunch of you came to your senses and tried to leave.” 

“That’s one perspective.” Dr. Li furrowed her brow. “Well, there’s no point in leaving you without the full picture, I suppose. Following our evacuation, most of us arrived here with what we could carry and no idea what the future would look like. The first month was rough. This facility wasn’t set up to sustain that number of people, and we struggled to turn what outdated tech was here into usable resources. It took forever to get the algae farms up and running at full capacity, and public opinion, for the most part, split into two groups with different views on what to do about our situation. One group wanted to stay hidden, bide time and wait until we were strong enough to slip away together or begin work expanding this bunker. That turned out to be more easily said than done, as we only recovered about 15 Gen 3s from the attack and our Gen 2s kept disappearing during supplies runs to the surface. We couldn’t keep sending them farther out to avoid threats because our relay here has a limited range, 12 miles at best. Robotics had lost most of its synth production equipment in the attack, and to make matters worse, most of them fell in with the second group, which began calling for us to disband entirely and take our chances above ground.” 

Murphy tried to sit up, but stabbing pains in her ribs forced her back down. Maxson turned to look at her and she realized he was also cuffed to the bed and had a puffy bruise forming around one eye. 

“He… said something about the Binets,” Murphy said softly. “Liam.” 

“Liam.” Dr. Li nodded. “He and his father convinced other scientists, and their companion synth must have rallied the rest of her kind because they managed to organize, sabotaged what synth production materials we had, and tried to break into our meager weapons stash following some troubling broadcasts from Diamond City Radio. A firefight ensued, and the would-be liberators were overcome.” 

“Which side were you on?” 

Dr. Li’s answer was brusque. “The side that survived.” 

Murphy gingerly felt along her arms, cataloguing the bumps and bruises she had sustained. “And you’re down to less than a dozen of you.”

Dr. Li cast her eyes back at the door and sighed. “There are 10 of us left. Myself, Allie and her son, the two little Thompson girls, Dr. Volkert, Alana, Lawrence, Rosalind and William. We have a handful of Gen 1s and 2s in storage, a couple of basic robots that we managed to acquire before our scavenging missions ceased, three Gen 3 models plus X6-88, and no way of making more synths. Everyone else is dead, or missing, presumed dead.” 

A question arose in Murphy’s mind. “Including Dr. Zimmer?” 

“Zimmer?” Dr. Li looked confused. “No one’s seen Zimmer in about eight years. This used to be his outpost, but it was empty when we arrived.” 

That raised more questions, but somehow, Murphy didn’t think any of them were quite relevant to the current situation. She glanced up at Maxson, who looked for all the world like he wanted to rip the posts off the bed, bend the door off its hinges and hunt down every single one of the remaining 10 Institute residents. She narrowed her eyes and turned back to Dr. Li. “Why are you telling us this?” 

“Because I’m tired,” Dr. Li answered bluntly. “I’m tired of hiding underground, I’m tired of trying to justify our insistence on complete isolation, I’m tired of crunching numbers to figure out how to go on surviving in a hole in the ground when I know we’re well past the point where it’s logical. There are far better uses of my time, and I can’t start any of them until we settle things. I’m sorry for my comments to both of you in the meeting we held earlier, but they are the harsh truths that most of us have lived with and nursed while we waited around for someone to come find us. We have nowhere else to go, and we are desperate.” 

She took a deep breath and let it out. “And as a personal favor to Arthur. Your old mentor did me a good turn once, and if I owe you anything, it’s the truth.” 

“You owe me more than truths, Dr. Li,” Maxson rumbled. “Far more, after this.” 

“Well, save the debt for some other time.” Dr. Li stood and brushed off her blue division head lab coat. “We’ve come to a deal with Head Scribe Rothchild. I expect the exchange to take place tomorrow morning, so get some rest. I’ll send X6-88 in shortly to uncuff you both.” 

* * *

Once the Courser had left them alone, Maxson leaned over Murphy and pressed a hand into the mattress next to her face. “Tell me what he did to you,” he demanded. “And he’ll pay for it.” 

Try as she might, Murphy couldn’t muster the same feelings. Something about Dr. Li’s explanation had sapped her of energy, of any sense of revenge or wrath she’d been carrying since her first encounter with the Institute. Both she and they were already broken beyond what she’d imagined, and she wanted nothing more than to sink into the mattress, through the floor and deeper into the bowels of the earth until she couldn’t feel any more of the throbbing soreness that permeated her mind and body. 

“Let it go,” she mumbled, curling a hand around his arm. “It’s over. They’re finished.” 

This was obviously a hurdle that Maxson couldn’t yet clear. His face cycled through a mess of passions- were those _ tears _threatening to leave the corners of his eyes?- and he gathered her close before she could stop him. 

“Arthur,” Murphy chided, her chin warm against his shoulder. “Put me back down, everything hurts.” 

Maxson released her quickly and she looked up at him reproachfully. “You never said you knew Dr. Li.” 

His face hardened again, the emotions vanishing. “I did not.” 

“She called you _ Arthur.” _

“She did.” 

“Why?” 

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, carefully thumbing the edges of the bruise over his eye as he did. “She worked for the Brotherhood for about a year in the Capital Wasteland, when I was squiring under Elder Lyons.” 

The memory of Elizabeth Titus asking after the Institute scientist aboard her flying boat flooded Murphy’s mind. “Project Purity,” she blurted out before she could stop herself. 

Maxson gave her a look of surprise. “Did she tell you of this?” 

“Lucky guess,” Murphy deflected. “Seems like her type of work. Was she any different back then?” 

“Not in the slightest.” 

Murphy let out a few chuckles before the sharp pains they brought on forced her to stop. His slight smile at her mirth disappeared along with them, and he carefully laid himself out beside her, arms clasped over his torso so as not to exacerbate her bruising. Murphy shifted over to give him more room, wincing as she did but glad of the company overall. 

“Only 10 people and four Gen 3 synths,” he mused. “Three of them, children. I never would have suspected.” 

“All those others, dead. What are we going to tell Desdemona?” Murphy tilted her head further back and frowned. “Do you think it was the Directorate that sent the female Courser to the debate?” 

“Or sent _ a _ Courser to disrupt Liberty Prime’s arrival.” Maxson slowly twiddled his thumbs. “The Courser in Diamond City had a deep range transmitter, which Dr. Li’s story doesn’t corroborate. If they had that technology, they would have been able to send the synths beyond a 12-mile radius. And this still doesn’t explain the woman that you witnessed acquiring a Gen 2 outside the convalescent home, though I wonder how many of their synths went missing in the field because of her.” 

“But it does explain the Gen 2s snatching a robot.” Murphy added. “And apparently no one has any idea what happened to Zimmer, even though this is _ his _ base. What did they do with you, when they took you away?” 

“Finalization of the agreement,” Maxson grunted, readjusting his position on the bed so that he was facing her, propped up on one arm. “Head Scribe Rothchild drove a hard bargain, it seems. Every research project is forfeit, every piece of equipment that the survivors do not intend to carry with them is to be relayed to the surface, and the Brotherhood will be taking control of this facility henceforth. Your dog and I will be exchanged for a powered-up vertibird, which I presume the Institute has a pilot for, and you will remain with them until they reach the outer edges of the Commonwealth or until they feel they’ve made good their escape. No tracking devices, no escort and no pursuit, and they’ll agree to release you into the wasteland unharmed.” 

Murphy rubbed her neck, mapping out the sore parts of her skin. “Too late for that.” 

He put his own hand over hers, as tenderly as he’d taken it outside the subterranean door to the bunker. “They won’t touch you again if they value their lives.” 

“Mmm.” Murphy entwined her fingers in his. “And how do the Minutemen and Railroad factor into this?” 

“The Head Scribe and Proctors will honor the agreement with the Minutemen and allow them to assist in cataloguing and testing the acquired tech,” Maxson replied. He pulled his hand away to massage his forehead. “Your general was quick to remind us that we already went to the trouble of hammering out an alliance that included the sharing of technology which could help settlements around the Commonwealth. The Railroad…” 

“Want the synths and don’t care about anything else,” Murphy guessed. “And Rothchild said no.” 

“I believe it’s under consideration.” 

Murphy squinted in mutual discomfort and looked over at him. “Is this making your brain hurt, too?” 

“How else would you prefer to spend the time?” 

“I don’t know.” Murphy smiled. “Do you remember the first night you stole me away?” 

He tilted his head slightly. “To Mass Fusion?” 

“No, no, I stole _ you _that night.” She carefully rolled onto her side to face him fully. “I mean that night at the chapel, west of the city.” 

Maxson’s blue eyes softened. “Of course.” 

“We drank and you let me play 20 questions…” 

His expression acquired a hint of dubiousness. “Captain…” 

Murphy weakly waved a hand. “Just… I need to tell you some things. Don’t try to stop me because we have no idea how tomorrow is going to go, and if all these new bruises of mine are any kind of indication, it might… be the end.” 

“They wouldn’t dare. Dr. Li-” 

“Clearly can’t control everyone under her jurisdiction at once,” Murphy said, cutting him off. “You need to listen, and you need to do what I tell you to, okay?” 

“Captain, this isn’t necess-” 

“Arthur, _ it is,” _ she insisted. “So pay attention. Dogmeat’s his own man, so he’ll adopt his next person without anyone’s help.” 

She raised her head and called out to the room next door. “Right, boy?” 

Dogmeat responded with a bark, and Murphy plowed forward. “All of the houses that I own, and everything in them, go to Bobby- er, that’s Robert Joseph MacCready, and his son Duncan, and Shaun. Codsworth, too, even though I don’t like calling him a piece of property.” 

Maxson looked skeptical. “Should I be writing this down?” 

“Shush. I think you still have my set of T-45, so make sure that gets to Sturges. He put more work into that power armor than I did, he deserves it. MacCready knows where all of my weapons caches are, so he can do whatever he wants with them, too. Tell Kasumi that she can have my Pip-Boy and first dibs on whatever I left behind at Far Harbor.”

There were a million things in her head that she’d never said, and it all started to come out, more than Maxson could possibly remember. “Tell Preston that I always knew he was going to be a great general someday and I hid an emergency stash of caps behind _ Washington Crossing the Delaware. _ Tell Piper that she can write whatever books she wants about me, I’m sure they’ll be great, and tell Nick Valentine and Curie that they’re officially Shaun’s godparents. Tell Desdemona that I’m proud of her and tell Glory that I’m so sorry about Deacon.” 

“Captain, you can tell them yourself.” 

The largest thing she’d left unsaid loomed in her mind, and she looked down quickly, then up again. “And I want you to know that what we had… it was real. I don’t think I wanted to admit it to myself, even after Goodneighbor, but I realized it way too late, way past all of the nights I cried myself to sleep. I’m sorry that it took me so long to figure it out, but it turns out I’m not that good at interpreting my own feelings.” 

“Murphy, you don’t-” 

“Please.” She shut her eyes and shook her head. “Just let me get it out, or I’ll regret that I didn’t. I’d like to think we taught each other about impermanence or building bonds that last or something, but really I just want to tell you that I… I loved you. And that… that was enough. I needed exactly that.” 

He didn’t respond, and when Murphy opened her eyes she kept them down, unable to meet his gaze. 

“Maybe this world wasn’t ready for us, or we weren’t ready for it.” It was spilling out of her now, much more than she’d intended to say. “But if Nate… taught me anything, it’s that feelings like those don’t fade. They just change. And I never, _ ever, _ want you to feel like you did on that bridge in DC a decade ago, so if it helps…” 

She finally looked up and found him staring at her, shocked. “I loved you then. Some part of me loves you now. Some part of me always will.” 

It felt like an age before he spoke. “How… can you know about that?” he asked. "I've never told a single soul."

“Does it matter?” Murphy bit her lower lip. “I saw it for a reason. I must have.” 

She closed her eyes again and dug her fingers into the mattress, clinging to her resolve for dear life. “If this is really it, tell Shaun that I still cared, even if I didn’t come back. And tell Bobby… that I’m sorry. I think he knows the rest.” 

Stillness settled around her again, and this time Murphy couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes. She took in a sharp breath when she felt Maxson press a kiss to her forehead, but she didn’t pull away. 

“I won’t let this be your end,” he whispered into her hair. “I swear it. You’ve made your promises, and this is mine.” 

* * *

When X6-88 came to collect Maxson in the morning, it felt like a piece of Murphy was being ripped out from somewhere beneath her ribs. She still had tears on her face when the Courser came back later for her, bearing the clothes she had abandoned by the cistern’s edge as well as her non-lethal belongings. She put them on again while he waited, tucking the various trappings into her pockets. 

“So, did the Brotherhood classify you as personnel, or as equipment?” she endeavored to ask. 

“Equipment, ma’am.” 

“Of course.” Murphy rolled her eyes. “I guess the Railroad will have a custody battle on their hands. Can you tell me anything else?” 

“No ma’am.” X6-88 stared at her, impassive. “Only that the transfer of portable technology is nearly complete. The parties will meet for the exchange of the Elder and your effects once the facility has been emptied and is ready to be turned over to the Brotherhood of Steel, Minutemen and Railroad.” 

Murphy strapped on her Pip-Boy and nodded. “And I get in the vertibird.” 

“Correct ma’am. You’ll be escorted by Dr. Li.” 

“Oh, joy. Shall we?” 

She was surprised when he didn’t cuff her, and together they made their way deeper into the hallways of the facility. The doors were all flung open this time, and there were recent scuff marks running out of them to lead the way they were walking. They passed a room full of growing lights and raised pools of murky green water, a laboratory where the marks in the dust and stains betrayed the number of gadgets that had been boxed up and sent topside, and another full of heavy lockers that were probably bolted to the floor and weren’t going anywhere. As the scuffs in the hallway became more and more numerous, Murphy began to hear voices echoing in the distance, until they reached the end of the hallway and entered a room marked _MOLECULAR RELAY. _

Everyone in the room paused what they were doing when she entered. The space wasn’t very large, as a pile of crates and deactivated Mister Handys was currently blocking access to the relay itself, but nevertheless there were people crammed in, waiting for their turn to flash to the surface. Dr. Filmore looked up from the machine’s controls and glowered as one of the crates vanished in a beam of blue light, illuminating each of the tired, scared and resigned faces: Rosalind Orman accompanied by the Thompson twins, Alice and Julia, Dr. Volkert, and Dr. Li. 

To Murphy’s surprise, there were also three Brotherhood Scribes in the room, clustered around Dr. Filmore while she operated the molecular relay. Clinging to Dr. Filmore’s side was her young son, Quentin, who looked at each of the Scribes with nervous suspicion. One of the Scribes noticed Murphy’s entrance and nodded to the other two, who also stopped their observation to watch. 

Dr. Li cleared her throat and stepped forward. “You’re with me, Sole Survivor,” she said, before slapping a handcuff over Murphy’s right wrist. She fixed her own left wrist into the other circlet and took a deep breath. 

“You think I’m going to run?” Murphy asked. 

“Yes.” 

“Where’s the Elder?” Murphy pressed. “And where’s my dog?” 

“Already on the surface. After this all gets sent up, we’ll go, too.” 

They waited and watched as one by one, the equipment and the Institute survivors disappeared from the relay’s platform. Eventually the Scribes began taking over the controls, and Dr. Filmore and Quentin vanished too. Finally, Dr. Li led Murphy forward to stand in the machine’s operation area. 

“Final assets incoming,” one of the Scribes said into a radio. “Stand by above. Over.” 

They began to count down, and Murphy shut her eyes to prevent the light from blinding her. She felt the familiar lurch, and the ambient sounds of the Institute bunker were instantly replaced with a slight breeze, nearby shouting of orders, the rotors of vertibirds and the clank of passing suits of power armor. 

Slowly, Murphy opened her eyes and let them adjust to the sunlight, something she hadn’t seen in days. She was standing on one of the cleared patches of land the Brotherhood had been using for its vertibird fleet, one of which was idling off to her left, with Higgs at the controls and most of the Institute survivors in the main cabin toting overstuffed backpacks. Between her and the vertibird stood Maxson, hands cuffed, while Alana Secord held a laser pistol to his head. To the right and front of her was a half-circle of personnel moving around boxes of Institute tech, a mix of Brotherhood and Minutemen uniforms. A line of Knights in power armor stood just in front of them, along with Head Scribe Rothchild, General Preston Garvey, Desdemona and Curie, who was holding Dogmeat on a rope leash. 

There was a crowd watching from beyond the piles of tech, mostly Minutemen soldiers and Lancers, and Murphy heard someone calling her name from it. She craned her neck and caught sight of Haylen, vigorously waving her cap from behind a taller soldier. “Murphy!” 

“Is that everyone and everything, Madison?” Rothchild called out to them, over the rumble of the crowd. 

“Everything you asked for, Reginald,” Dr. Li replied sourly. “We have a deal.” 

“We do,” Rothchild agreed. “Let’s proceed with the hand-off.” 

Dr. Li looked over at Secord and nodded. The SRB leader cocked her weapon and pressed it into Maxson’s neck. “Time to go.” 

Maxson held his chin high. “Honor the agreement, Head Scribe,” he said. 

Secord began to walk backward toward the vertibird, and he followed her. 

Murphy whipped her head around to Dr. Li in horror. “You said you’d take me. Not him.” 

Dr. Li shrugged. “Plans change.” 

Murphy yanked her arm up and clawed at the handcuffs, swung her weight around and pulled at the other woman’s wrist so hard she knew she had to be causing pain. Dr. Li braced herself and stood firm, a look of mournful acceptance on her face. 

Every Brotherhood member with a weapon trained it on the woman retreating toward the vertibird, and Rothchild was wearing the same look of horror as Murphy. “Stand down, _ stand down!” _ he ordered forcefully. “Madison, what are you playing at? This is not-” 

One of the Knights stepped forward to protect him and he broke off, seething, to direct his troops in the face of the deception. Murphy tried to squeeze her hand out of the cuff, scraping against her bones until she gasped, but Secord dragged Maxson further and further back until they were helped up into the vertibird. Murphy’s attempts to free herself sent both her and Dr. Li tumbling to the ground, while the aircraft began to hum louder and louder and slowly rise above the gathered crowd. 

“Why?!” Murphy cried out in Dr. Li’s face over the din of its ascent. 

“You weren’t their best chance to get away unscathed, _ he _ was,” Dr. Li yelled, trying to keep her flyaway hair from obscuring her face. “And I owed him a favor.” 

Murphy stared up at the vertibird, mouth open. _ I won’t let this be your end. _

_ “Arthur!” _

“Murphy!” 

Footsteps pounded toward her, and she felt hands on her shoulders and head. Someone slid into a crouch in front of her, scattering dirt and dust with the force of their entrance. 

“Murphy,” MacCready said, looking in horror at the bruises on her face and neck. “Murphy, are you alright?” 

“They took him,” she said helplessly. “It was supposed to be me.” 

Haylen swung into view overhead, then Preston. “Murphy, what happened?” Haylen asked, her voice thin and high. 

“Out of the way.” Knights shoved all three of them aside and Rothchild appeared between them, cutting an imposing figure for a man in his old age. “Madison, I’m disappointed in you.” 

Dr. Li unlocked the handcuffs and stood, brushing off her lab coat. “It was Maxson’s idea. You have what you wanted, and you have me as a bonus. Just honor the agreement like your Elder said, and there won’t be a problem.” 

Rothchild had nothing for her but a look of absolute disgust. “Take her away,” he ordered, and two of the Knights took Dr. Li by her arms and led her out of Murphy’s eyesight. Rothchild leaned over her as they went, his chin quivering. 

“You had something to do with this,” he said poisonously. “If any harm befalls him, consider this the end of our peaceful relationship. Get on your feet, Captain, and get our Elder back, or you’ll pay with everything you possess.” 

“Hey.” 

Rothchild looked up, and Murphy turned to find Preston’s laser musket, MacCready’s sniper rifle and her own two plasma guns wielded by Haylen trained on Rothchild and his Knights. “Back off, Head Scribe,” said Preston. 

Rothchild screwed his mouth up and stalked off. The Knights looked at each other, put their own weapons down and followed, leaving her would-be protectors to dive on her once again. 

“Murphy, what happened to you?” Haylen demanded as she felt her forehead, Alpha and Omega abandoned in the dirt beside her. “Did the Institute do this to you?” 

Preston’s voice overlapped hers. “Captain, we’ve heard nothing from you since they captured you two, did you know they were planning to-” 

MacCready knelt in front of her, dropped his gun to the ground and cupped her face in his hands. “Murphy,” he said simply. 

She put her hands over his. “Bobby.” 

He kissed her, one hand sliding to the back of her neck, and she kissed him back, tears beginning to flow down her face. Haylen and Preston’s voices ceased abruptly, and the world slowed. 

When they broke apart again, MacCready pressed his forehead to hers. “Don’t do that again.” 

“Never.” Murphy opened her eyes. “Bobby, I need your help.” 

He looked up, following the departing vertibird with his eyes, and nodded. “Anything. He brought you back.”


	6. Unfamiliar Territory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Murphy gets to look at some maps beyond the Commonwealth.

Murphy and MacCready sat in the dirt for a few moments, watching the vertibird carrying Elder Arthur Maxson and the last of the Institute jet away to the north. The Brotherhood forces shouted and swirled around the cleared area where the Institute’s tech had been deposited, Lancers in orange suits and Scribes weighed down by armfuls of computer equipment dashing to and fro. Still, the chaos was utterly incapable of drowning out the sound of Preston Garvey clearing his throat. 

“That’s, uh…” the Minutemen general let loose a nervous chuckle. “How long have you two been…” 

MacCready cut him off before Murphy could. “Not important, Garvey.” 

“Uh-huh.” Preston glanced over at Haylen, then looked up and away immediately. “Well, we all know the Brotherhood doesn’t waste time taking action, and they had a little trick up their sleeves that you might want the details on, if Rothchild’s willing to make good on that threat. Ready to go?” 

Murphy nodded, and he collected her plasma pistols from the ground for her while MacCready pulled her to her feet. Haylen gave them a look that was somewhere between perplexed and dismayed before taking off into the fray. Murphy did her best to keep up as they ducked around crates, workstations and arguing Knights. She slowed when she encountered the Institute’s remaining Gen 3 synths, X6-88 included, all standing motionless with their heads down while an armed recon squad stood guard. Despite the synths’ deactivated state, Desdemona was ruthlessly arguing with Rothchild in front of the power-armored squad. 

“Continued treatment of these men and women as things, as _ property, _will only breed malcontent as soon as they wake up,” Desdemona was saying, gesturing at the Gen 3s. “Show them the Brotherhood’s goodwill now, and they will be more willing to cooperate with any questions you wish to ask them.” 

“Why bother, when we have the means to keep them controlled?” Rothchild asked in return, back to his usual measured self. “If there is no reason to take the risk, then we will not take it. They will stay deactivated.” 

“Afraid you won’t like the answers they give you about their own consciousness when they wake up?” Desdemona crossed her arms. “You’re manufacturing the response that would best suit your worldview, Head Scribe.” 

“Hardly. They’re the only manufactured part of the equation.” 

Preston paused next to Murphy and shook his head ever so slightly. Murphy grimaced. As much as she wanted to stop and join Desdemona’s side, it had to wait. She put her head down and pressed on after Haylen, MacCready and Preston in tow. They made their way up the ramp to the quarry’s main control center, and Haylen moved back to let Murphy go in first, avoiding her gaze as she did. A cluster of Scribes was hurriedly tapping away on a series of hastily-constructed computer banks atop every surface inside, while a familiar redhead who stood at least a foot taller than any of them snapped orders. They paused their work when the group entered, eyes swinging between Murphy and their leader. 

“Proctor Ingram,” Murphy said wearily, sweeping her hair back over her shoulder. “Please tell me something good.” 

Ingram gave Murphy and her ensemble a hard look and jerked her head at the Scribes inside the control center. “Take a break.” The Scribes scurried to obey, and the woman in the power armor frame stepped forward until she was towering above Murphy with a surly look. 

“I should have tossed you off the Prydwen’s flight deck the minute I laid eyes on you,” she said. 

Murphy nodded. “Probably.” 

“You gonna clean up this mess?” 

“That’s why I’m here.” 

The Proctor studied her for a moment before returning Murphy’s nod. “Fine. Listen up, because I’m only saying this once.” 

She turned back to the bank of terminals atop the control center’s desk and gestured toward one in the middle. “We implanted a tracker inside their speed control console that shouldn’t be easy to find, unless you know where to look. It’s a bit stronger than the vertibird’s own radar system, connection from up to 50 miles instead of the usual 20.” 

Murphy joined her at the console and peered at the grid on its screen. “So as long as we stay between 20 to 50 miles out from them…” 

“Our little friend will tell us exactly where they are, but they won’t see us.” Ingram couldn’t help smirking. 

Murphy followed the blinking marker on the grid with her finger and read the measurements at the bottom. “Running out of range, though, I see.” 

“Which is why we’re taking this station mobile.” Ingram turned to look over her shoulder at the humming vertibirds outside. “We’ve got a portable tracking station wired into one of those, but we’re going to need a fleet to make sure we don’t miss the Elder’s exit. No chance to put a tracker on _ him, _ I’m afraid.” 

“I’m just surprised you didn’t wire one into his holotags,” Murphy said dryly, following her gaze. “Do you have space for us on one of those?” 

Ingram sighed. “We should. I’m coordinating the search-and-rescue effort with Lancer-Captain Kells. He won’t like it, but I say we can drop a few Scribes. They’d rather be here cataloguing Institute tech, anyway. Four of you, tops.” 

“Bobby, myself…” Murphy looked to Preston. “Who can you spare?” 

“Take the lieutenant,” he suggested, before tense realization flooded his face. He and Murphy looked at Haylen, and MacCready suddenly became very interested in his rifle’s strap buckle. Haylen looked at the floor, but didn’t protest. 

Preston nodded, brushing off the embarrassment quickly. “Beyond that, you’re on your own. We’re duty-bound to assist here, onsite.” 

There was a familiar clicking on the metal ramp outside, and Dogmeat pushed his way past MacCready and Preston and into the room with a deep whuff. His rope leash was trailing behind him, but Curie was no longer at the other end of it. 

Preston looked down at the German shepherd with a smile. “There’s your fourth. Now, I need to find Colonel Shaw.” 

He strode out of the control center and Haylen quickly followed, Dogmeat on her heels. Proctor Ingram shooed Murphy and MacCready out after them. “Get your things. Wheels up in 10 minutes.” 

“You owe me so much Power Noodles,” MacCready said as they made their way down the ramp, eyeing the waiting vertibirds with a look of foreboding. 

“If we make it out of this mess, I’ll buy you the whole damn stand,” Murphy muttered. “Takahashi and all.” 

* * *

Murphy retrieved her Institute-impounded supplies from Brotherhood possession and made her way over to the vertibirds with MacCready just before the 10 minutes were up. Dogmeat and Haylen had beaten them and already boarded with Ingram, but the two were keeping their heads down while the Proctor hung out the side to argue with Lancer-Captain Kells. 

“Necessary personnel _ only, _ Julia, you heard the Head Scribe,” Kells was roaring over the rotors. “We can’t afford the extra weight.” 

“Only my friends call me Julia, _ Lancer-Captain,” _ Ingram replied sourly. “They’re not extra weight, they’re with me. How in the hell are they supposed to help us track him down if we don’t give them a lift?” 

“Well that’s hardly our problem, is it, _ Proctor?” _Kells gestured at Murphy and MacCready as they approached. “Besides, we shouldn’t be exposing our aerial maneuvers to outside parties with questionable motives and loyalties.” 

“Let’s see, former Paladin, former Scribe, a sniper with a fear of heights and a dog.” Ingram ticked them off on her fingers. “Either they already know all about our aerial maneuvers or they’re not in any shape to competently share them. I’m vouching for them, Kells. If anything goes wrong, you can give my job to Bainbridge, I know he’s been gunning for it since I made him clean out the Prydwen’s sewage lines.” 

Kells grumbled and stalked away to a different vertibird, shooting Murphy a poisonous look as he did. Murphy swung up into the cabin with Ingram, and Haylen handed her the traveling pack she’d left behind before entering the quarry. “I took out the heaviest stuff that didn’t seem necessary,” the lieutenant said evenly. “Curie said she’d take care of it.” 

Murphy still caught the hint of sadness in her voice. “Thanks.” 

The two Lancers in the cockpit began switching on controls and talking into their headsets, while Ingram jammed a headset onto her own head and studied a swiveling screen attached to a haphazard bundle of cables. “Ready when you are, boys. Keep her steady, we’re only air picketing for now. No funny business.” 

“Copy that.” 

A Knight-Commander in the shiniest set of power armor Murphy had ever seen and two Field Scribes clambered aboard, and finally the vertibird began to rise. Four more did so in unison around the rim of the quarry, and Murphy watched the ground beneath them fall away. MacCready’s knuckles whitened as he gripped a safety handle, but Murphy couldn’t help feeling a weight slide off into the white marble maw. _ Good riddance. _

She turned her eyes upward, toward the edges of the only map she’d known since waking in the 23rd century. The coast of the Commonwealth was on the right of the squadron, Salem and Marblehead and Beverly next to an agitated sea. The wind buffeting the vertibird was strong, but Murphy hung onto her own safety handle and leaned outward all the same, searching the horizon for any sign of her target. 

Of course, the Institute had had too much of a head start to be within viewing distance, so she abandoned the task once it started to dry out her eyes. The radar screen was still a muddle of markers on a grid, but between Murphy’s knowledge of the immediate area and Ingram’s decipherable directions to Kells, Murphy was able to work it out. Haylen was listening in too, while keeping a protective grip on Dogmeat’s leash. She met Murphy’s eyes once before pressing her lips into a thin line and looking down to give the dog some attention. 

The squadron followed the blinking indicator of the tracking device across the Cape Ann peninsula and up to Plum Island before their location started to look unfamiliar to her. The Institute’s vertibird was hugging the coast, occasionally swinging out over the ocean but always returning to the perceived safety of land. As the Brotherhood trailed behind, Murphy surmised that they were trying to avoid larger city ruins and whatever sentient life remained in them. _ Smart, _ she thought to herself, _ one well-placed shot from a missile launcher and this all would have been for nothing. _

More clouds began to fill the northern sky, borne by the steady wind. Murphy rejoined MacCready where he had rooted himself in one of the fold-down seats, rifle between his knees. She pulled her own guns out and checked their cartridges before reaching out to rub his shoulder. 

“How are the boys?” she asked, yelling over the wind. 

He put his fingers over hers briefly. “Good. They’re with Danse and Codsworth at Breakheart Banks. Codsworth promised me he wouldn’t take his eyes off them.” 

Murphy sighed in relief. “Well, he does have three of those.” 

“What, no lecture about leaving them behind again?” 

“Not now. Maybe later.” Murphy smiled. “Thanks for… coming. I didn’t know if I…” 

The sentiment trailed off into the wind, but when he leaned over to press his forehead against her shoulder and nearly lost his hat in the process, she was pretty sure he had gotten the gist of it. 

* * *

The Brotherhood vertibirds had been tracking the Institute for a little over an hour when Proctor Ingram slapped the radar screen impatiently, then began barking orders into her headset. Murphy caught the words “stall” and “descent,” but couldn’t make out the rest. 

“What’s going on?” she yelled. 

Ingram swung the screen toward her. “They’ve stopped.” 

Sure enough, the tracking dot was still, about 20 miles to the northeast of the Brotherhood’s current position, slightly inland. The vertibird began to bank to the left, and MacCready’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the edge of his seat. The pilot circled once, then brought the aircraft down onto an open stretch of interstate asphalt. Murphy hung her head out of the cabin and watched the other vertibirds follow suit, touching down within shouting distance. A battered sign on the side of the road read _ I-295. _

“Where are we?” MacCready asked, jumping up to take advantage of being back on solid ground. 

Murphy fiddled with the map on her Pip-Boy. “Somewhere called… Falmouth. Just north of it. In Maine.” 

“Sorry, _ Maine?” _

Murphy ignored him and looked back toward Ingram. “Do you think they’re touching down to release the Elder?” 

“One can only hope,” the Proctor replied with a grimace. “We’ll mark the spot, then move in when they get back in the air. If we move in now, they’d see us. We’d risk spooking them into doing something they’d regret for the short remainder of their lives. For now, Kells and I say we wait.” 

Murphy sighed and followed MacCready out of the vertibird. The road was clear, save a few rusted cars scattered along it. Brotherhood personnel in each of the vertibirds were hopping out as well, mostly Knights with their miniguns and laser rifles trained on the trees lining the split freeway. Insects were chirping inside the sickly foliage, but Murphy couldn’t make out any birdsong. “Keep your eyes open,” the Knight-Commander advised them, her power armor thudding heavily against the concrete. 

Murphy turned back to the vertibird to see Haylen climbing down from it. The lieutenant yelped in surprise when Dogmeat vaulted out after her, yanking the leash from her hand and disappearing over the guard railing and into the grass before anyone could stop him. 

“Don’t worry about him,” Murphy assured her, leaving MacCready to wander away from the conversation he was clearly desperate to avoid. “He’ll be back before we take off again.” 

“If you’re sure.” Haylen tightened her ginger ponytail and took a deep breath, but she seemed to be waiting for Murphy to make the first move. 

“You- I… um.” Murphy ran a hand through her own hair. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you about Bobby and I.” 

Haylen laughed. The sound was a tad harsh but not altogether hostile. “And when were you supposed to tell me during the standoff with the Brotherhood, the chem-laced investigation or the time spent buried alive that you two had finally quit dancing around each other?” 

“I, uh, I did tell the Institute that I needed to have a heart-to-heart with someone up top, but they wouldn’t let me,” Murphy replied with a hesitant smile. “Had to have it with Maxson instead. Not the same, really.” 

Haylen’s eyes widened. “Oh. _ Oh. _ I hadn’t even considered…” 

Murphy stopped her. “I was joking. Well, not entirely, but that’s not the point. Back at Breakheart Banks, before we headed to the Slog. You asked me how Shaun and Duncan and Bobby were doing, and I should’ve told you then, but I froze up. Then you looked at Danse like you were… and I just told myself I shouldn’t ruin whatever was… you get the point.” 

“Ruin whatever was…” Haylen echoed, rubbing a hand up and down her cheek. A smile grew on her face. “Yeah, I get it. It’s okay. It’s a bit of a shock, but nothing I haven’t been through before or can’t handle. Don’t feel bad.” 

She reached out and put her hands on Murphy’s shoulders, then pulled her into a hug. “I’m happy for you two. But do you ever _ not _ have something wild going on in your life?” 

Murphy giggled into Haylen’s shoulder. “That’s the thing. Bobby’s… normal. Well, normal for me and the Commonwealth. It’s nice.” 

They broke apart, and Haylen made a playful face. “If any other wastelander girl ran off with a former Gunner with such a lax definition of personal property, they’d be asking for trouble. Seeing as it’s_ you…” _

“Yeah, yeah.” Murphy chuckled and led the way over to the guardrail. The two women leaned against it, scanning the area with mild interest as they did. Haylen looked skyward to the clouds rushing by overhead and sighed. 

“Danse and I are… well, we’re not nothing,” she admitted. “But we’re not what RJ and I were, yet, by any means. Danse still has so much that he needs to accept about himself, about his own nature, and I know he knows that, too. He’s still hesitant about adding someone else into the equation until he feels like he’s solved his own problems. You know how he is.” 

Murphy nodded and began rifling through her coat pockets, checking that everything had been returned by the Institute. “I do.” 

Haylen smiled ruefully. “He’s never been the type to ask for help, but when he grows to rely on someone, he does it fiercely. After Cutler, I think he’s afraid to let someone occupy that space again.” 

Murphy looked over at her in surprise. “He and Cutler were…?” 

“I think so, but that’s just it.” Haylen shrugged. “We haven’t had that conversation yet. I just know I want to, eventually, so for now I’m just… hanging in there.” 

“Well.” Murphy’s fingers came up against an unfamiliar object, and she pulled it out. It was Maxson’s flask, somehow mis-catalogued as hers. The container was empty, so she stowed it away again and took a deep breath. “I know it took me a bit to crack Danse, but it did happen. And you have an edge, you’ve known him longer than I have. Just give him time to adjust to you being a friend and confidante, not just a junior colleague and a responsibility. He’ll come around eventually.” 

Haylen grinned. _ “He’s _ the junior colleague now. Anyway, you’re better about setting that type of relationship up from the get-go than anyone else I know. I couldn’t imagine talking like this… _ about _ this… with anyone else I’ve worked with. Ever.” 

“That’s because we’re friends. I’m not _ just _ your captain, Haylen.” 

“Lieutenant,” Haylen corrected with a smirk. 

Murphy laughed. “Of course. _ Lieutenant _ Haylen.” 

They paused as the Knight-Commander stomped by, her power armor gleaming in the midday light. “What’s she using to get that shine?” Murphy asked. 

“Jones? Vinegar and Abraxo, or so I’m told.” Haylen leaned back. “So after the cave-in… what happened? No doubt Preston’s going to make you write up a report, but I’d like to hear it from you.” 

Before Murphy could launch into the story, though, a sudden wave of agitation swept through the Brotherhood soldiers along the roadway. The Lancers in the vertibird they had been traveling in hopped on the radio immediately, and Ingram’s face was scrunched up in concentration as she listened in on her headset. 

“Pack it up!” she yelled after a few tense seconds. “We’re moving in _ now!” _

Murphy and Haylen scrambled with the others to reboard. Dogmeat was last to arrive, leaping into the cabin just as the rotors reached top speed. 

“What’s the rush?” Murphy yelled to Ingram. “Did they start moving again?” 

“Looks like it,” Ingram replied. “But we’ve got a problem.” 

She pointed to her screen, where a mass of green points was advancing on the Institute’s tracking marker. “We’ve got a storm moving in. A big one.” 

Murphy grabbed a safety handle on the ceiling as the vertibird began to lift off. “What kind of storm?” 

She didn’t have to wait long for her answer. As soon as the vertibirds ascended above the trees, the rolling green front of the radstorm appeared, far to the northwest. Murphy could hear Kells barking orders through Ingram’s headset now, even over the sound of the rotors, but the Proctor ignored him and pulled her personnel and Murphy’s team in close. 

“We’re not going to beat it,” Ingram yelled over the rising wind. “That storm will have swallowed up the area they stopped in by the time we get up there. We’re going to have to divert east and land here.” 

She tapped the screen just south of where what looked like a river connected into a small bay. “According to our records, there’s an airport here. We’ll touch down and proceed on foot to where they landed, up here.” 

Murphy pulled up her Pip-Boy map and marked the spots Ingram was indicating. “Are we moving as one unit or squads?” 

“Depends on what we find.” 

* * *

By the time they began to touch down at the small airport, the radstorm had fully engulfed the city it was on the outskirts of. A line of rain dashed against the vertibird’s roof and shook the aircraft just as it met the ground, skidding it along the worn asphalt with a lurch. 

Murphy and MacCready pulled up the collars on their coats, and Haylen tucked her hair inside a hat from one of her many pockets. “Never seen rain in a radstorm before,” Haylen commented. 

Murphy grimaced. “They’re like this the further north you go. Less radiation overall, but the clouds are heavier with moisture. See, they’re darker.” 

“Move out!” Ingram ordered, and the mix of boots and power armor hit the wet ground outside. Lightning flashed, illuminating others doing the same along the line of vertibirds. Kells leaped out of the lead aircraft and began shouting orders. 

“Lancers, stay with your birds, on alert with comms open for the Falchion!” he yelled through the sheets of rain. “Proctor Ingram and Knight-Commander Jones will lead the investigative force! Knight-Sergeant Lutz, you and your squad will be in the reserve force!” 

“Scribes, keep your portable comm packs dry!” Ingram yelled in turn. “Jones, spread your forces out but remain within sight of each other! North to the road, then follow it west! Any sign of movement, radio it in before you so much as blink!” 

Jones joined in on issuing directives, and before long the Knights and Scribes had formed a rough line that advanced beyond the end of the runway and into a field of slimy grass. The forces quieted, and rumbles of thunder began to fill the silence. The little group of Minutemen representatives brought up the rear, and Murphy counted silently as they went. Proctor Ingram and her four Scribes, Knight-Commander Jones and 17 Knights, plus the four oddballs brought the total search party up to 27. 

MacCready noticed her counting and leaned over to talk. “Think we’re enough to take down a fog crawler if we have to?” 

“Probably a couple fog crawlers,” Murphy admitted. “But it’s going to be slow going. If there is anything here to be concerned about, it’ll be a miracle if it doesn’t notice us.” 

“Maybe the storm will cover us,” Haylen suggested on her other side. 

“Let’s hope so.” 

The fanned-out contingent connected with the highway Ingram had directed them to follow as the storm whipped around, dark green fog and rain pattering angrily against the Knights’ suits of power armor. Murphy envied them as they turned into the wind, headlamps powering up one by one as visibility grew worse. MacCready and Haylen held their hats down over their eyes and pushed forward, but Murphy had no such luxury. She squinted against the rain as she tried to read the map on her Pip-Boy, studying the streets of the city they were about to enter. Eventually the storm forced her to give up, and she instead used the gleam of wet light from Knight-Commander Jones’ helmet and shoulders as a beacon through the murk. 

They passed several boarded-up businesses on the outskirts of town: A car repair shop, a boat supply store, a small Red Rocket station. Several ghouls tumbled and slipped toward them from inside the Red Rocket, but they were easily dispatched by the Knights’ laser blasts. They passed two cemeteries bordered by tall, wrought-iron fences before the buildings began to grow thicker, dilapidated Georgian bricks and sagging colonials with broken porch railings. The Brotherhood contingent came to a halt at an intersection outside of a church with beautifully-arched windows and gray walls stained with water damage. 

Before she could find Ingram to ask what direction they planned to take, Murphy spotted the problem. The town’s main street, the most direct route to their destination, ran forward only a block before disappearing into a marsh. The streets beyond it to the north were similarly flooded from what Murphy could see, water swallowing broken houses and stores up to their first floor windows. 

Knight-Commander Jones led them further west instead, past the church, a museum and a motel before they reached the edge of a Super-Duper Mart parking lot. A jumble of vehicles appeared to have collided at the grocery store’s entrance, a pre-war pileup frozen in time. The Brotherhood carefully began to move past it, their helmet lights swinging around to light the rusted hunks of metal and abandoned shopping carts that were scattered in the street. 

Murphy had her eyes down, partially to look out for ankle-grabbing ghouls but mostly to avoid the rain, when one of the Scribes let out a shriek. All of the Knights’ headlamps swung toward the noise. The Scribe skittered backward from the source of his fear: An enormous, speckled leg uncurling from within a van that read _ Lobster Grill Family Restaurant _ on the side in faded paint. 

Knight-Commander Jones pushed to the front of the receding line of Knights. _ “Hold!” _ she ordered, as an impossibly large crustacean unfolded from within the van, a mass of ruddy claws and limbs. The van creaked and tilted upward as it pulled itself out, two eyestalks the size of a man’s legs last to emerge. They bobbed curiously at the assembly, even as every last figure leveled a weapon at it. 

Haylen’s face whitened and Dogmeat whined at her side. MacCready gritted his teeth, rifle already pointing at the creature. “What… is _ that?” _ he asked. 

“Hermit crab,” Murphy replied grimly, Alpha and Omega at the ready. “Just back up. The island folk say they’re not predators, unless you make the mistake of attacking one.” 

He and Haylen followed her lead, and the rest of the Brotherhood seemed to as well, retreating slowly as the crab looked around. More claws and eyestalks emerged from what Murphy had thought was a pileup, until a full colony of about five crabs was regarding the contingent. Their vehicular shells ranged in size from a little Fusion Flea Supreme up to half of a shuttle bus, and they shifted effortlessly into standing positions while the metal screeched around them. It became apparent rather quickly that they were fascinated with Jones. Their eyestalks bobbed along with her movement, and the one in the restaurant van began to scuttle toward her, claws outstretched. 

“The Far Harbor folks said they like to collect stuff,” Murphy said, horrified. 

Haylen glanced at her uneasily. “What kind of stuff?” 

Knight-Commander Jones realized what was happening before Murphy could answer, and as the crab reached for her she opened fire with her Gatling laser. Most of the red beams hit the crab’s shell and scattered, but a few found their mark in its soft head. As it reared back, the rest of the Brotherhood forces followed suit, and the street erupted in a mess of gunfire and screaming metal. 

Murphy grabbed Haylen’s arm and pulled her away from the fray, running for the steps of a nearby brick building. MacCready was hot on her tail, and to Murphy’s surprise, so was Proctor Ingram. 

“Captain,” the Brotherhood leader said as soon as they were secure under the brick building’s awning. “We need to make better time than this. I’ve never seen a critter like that before, but something tells me they’re a little tougher than your average mirelurk.” 

Dogmeat barked at the firefight and bounded around the puddles just outside their refuge. Murphy looked out over the struggling Knights and hermit crabs and nodded. “What do you need me to do?” 

Ingram slicked her hair back out of her face. “I need you to check the spot those Institute escapees landed at, and if you can, find Maxson. With this storm and the fact that we’re moving through unfamiliar territory, I’m not keen on breaking up into smaller groups unless we have to, but then you wind up in confrontations like this. You’re not under my command, and that means you and your crew can cover ground a lot faster than us- ergo, you’re our best bet on getting there before something bad happens to the Elder.” 

She leaned in and looked Murphy straight in the eye. “You might not be Brotherhood anymore, but you’ve never struck me as anything less than Brotherhood material. I know Elder Maxson trusts you. Can I?” 

“I-” Murphy nodded again, taken aback. “You have my word.” 

“You know where to go?” 

“Yes.” 

Ingram flagged a nearby Scribe down. The man ran over, and upon her order, handed each of them a pair of vertibird signal grenades. “Throw one of these down as soon as the weather’s clear when you’re ready for us to come get you,” the Proctor instructed. “I’ll radio Kells and tell him you got separated during the fight. Now go!” 

Murphy looked to Haylen and MacCready, who nodded and shrugged respectively. Murphy whistled for Dogmeat, and together the four slipped around the side of the building and into the storm’s haze, the sounds of battle fading behind them.


	7. Through the Spiral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the gang becomes VIP guests at the hottest post-war destination in Maine.

“Which do you prefer?” Murphy yelled over the sound of the downpour, desperately trying to wipe the screen of her Pip-Boy clear. “Vertibird ride, or this nonsense?” 

“We’re arriving at the point where I’d call it a toss-up,” MacCready answered at the same volume, scrunching his shoulders and glaring skyward. Haylen nodded on Murphy’s other side, her eyes nervously scanning the lumber yard they were wading through. So far they hadn’t encountered anything threatening, but they were out in the open now, bogged down by softening ground and horribly exposed. Even Dogmeat was sticking close and whining occasionally, his thin complaints piercing through the sound of rain. The sky had grown darker and more relentless, its deluge smacking against the travelers, the mud and nearby stacks of rotting wood that Murphy could barely make out. 

Murphy cursed and whipped her head around, trying to orient herself. They hadn’t been able to hear the Brotherhood’s struggle against the hermit crabs for some time. The screech of metal and flashes of laser fire had quickly been swallowed up by the rad rainstorm, and the four rescuers had already put at least three blocks of buildings between themselves and the main force. They’d ducked around old storefronts, snuck through several backyards and re-routed twice upon encountering the same swamp that had sent the Brotherhood down its current detour. In fact, Murphy was pretty sure they were on the outskirts of the little town that once bore the name “Brunswick,” but it was hard to tell when the elements were so dead set on obscuring her map. 

“This way,” she shouted, trudging off to the southwest. “There should be some train tracks we can follow to an old shipping lot, then we head north.” 

MacCready, Haylen and Dogmeat squelched along behind her, Dogmeat barking once as if in agreement. Sure enough, Murphy was relieved to discover a raised set of rails leading into the rain and fog. She clambered up the ballast and offered Haylen her hand, who took it gladly and pulled herself up. “I’m not cut out for this,” the lieutenant admitted. 

“Weren’t you a Field Scribe?” Murphy joked. 

Haylen made a face at her. “Usually, Field Scribes wait until the weather’s more favorable before they go off on excursions. Would that we could.” 

Murphy grimaced. Every bone in her body was aching for such a rest, every bruise she’d sustained in the Institute bunker crying out to be soothed. Hell, she could still feel the Rebound that she’d used in her attempt to find a way out of entombment, weakening her joints and urging her to lie down in place for a week or so. Instead, she turned her face into the wind and pulled her collar up as far as it could go. MacCready reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, and Murphy pressed her chin into it affectionately. “We’ve got this,” MacCready reassured her. 

They abandoned conversation for a while, and Dogmeat trotted ahead, sniffing the air and swiveling his ears around. He showed no signs of alarm, even when they came upon the lot Murphy had anticipated and they made their way through the ghostly rows of abandoned shipping trucks toward the old U.S. Route 1. When they arrived at the highway, Murphy peered east. Nothing but standing water leading back toward where they’d parted ways with the Brotherhood. Knights in power armor were going to have a hard time getting around to where the Institute had ostensibly landed. 

A meandering riverside road led northwest from the highway, curving between another cemetery and a car dealership missing most of its stock. Murphy wondered if hermit crabs had made off with the merchandise over the years, trying on cars like girls trying on dresses. The buildings thinned and the trees thickened, spindly branches blowing ominously in the wake of the storm and casting eerie shadows with every flash of lightning. Haylen looked to the clouds each time thunder rolled, clearly fretful. MacCready searched the trees on either side with his scope. Murphy kept her gaze fixed ahead, willing the man they were pursuing to be alive. “I won’t let this be your end,” she muttered, repeating Maxson’s promise to herself. “I swear it.” 

A left turn. A tense walk down a rural cul-de-sac. A jaunt through an overgrown lawn and a hop over a rain-filled gully, and the four emerged through the trees to the point Proctor Ingram had marked. The rain lulled briefly, revealing an unlikely sight ahead of the group. Haylen’s jaw immediately dropped, Murphy pulled up short, and MacCready collided with her back, making noises of protest before swallowing them in surprise. 

Stretching out ahead of them was a field of grass, carving a path through the Maine conifers. It was glistening wet, green and rain-sodden, but more astonishingly, it was short. As MacCready and Haylen stared, dumbfounded, Murphy crouched down to pluck a few blades and examine them. There on the grass tips were the unmistakable cuts of a lawn mower blade. 

“Where… are we?” Haylen asked, eyes wide. 

“Golf course,” Murphy replied, surveying the green apprehensively. “But… it shouldn’t look like this. Not unless someone’s been… taking care of it.” 

Dogmeat bounded off immediately into the open space, and it took a few commands from Murphy before he trotted back, ears perky and tongue lolling. Clearly, he was the only one unconcerned about what the course’s appearance might mean. 

“And this is where the Institute landed?” MacCready muttered, rifle at the ready. 

Murphy nodded. “I guess I get why. It’s clear enough to land, for sure, but if someone here is mowing the green, you’d think that would be enough to scare them off the idea.” 

“They don’t have the wasteland experience we do,” Haylen said, adjusting her hat. “It’s certainly inviting. Beautiful, even. Should we radio it in?” 

“If there is anyone here besides Maxson, the last thing we want right now is a vertibird swooping in and spooking them,” MacCready advised. 

Murphy holstered one of her plasma pistols and took a deep breath. “Right. Problem is, I’m not sure where to go from here. Supposedly they landed on this hole, but they’re obviously not here anymore, and I don’t see anyone out and about.” 

“Hole?” Haylen asked, confused. “What hole?” 

“Golf term. Sorry.” 

MacCready lifted his scope and checked the trees around the green, then shook his head. “Can’t go in announcing ourselves either without inviting everything in the area to attack us, and the rain wrecked anything we might be able to use to find someone. You were right, boss, they should’ve wired some kind of tracker into the guy’s holotags.” 

“Tracker,” Murphy murmured absentmindedly, before a thought seized her. She dug around in her coat pockets and produced the flask that had accidentally been included in her belongings. _ “Tracker. _ We _ have _ a tracker. Best one I know.” 

Dogmeat whuffed when she knelt down to offer the empty vessel up. He sniffed it over carefully, then put his nose to the ground and began snuffling with gusto. Murphy held her breath, willing the German shepherd to pick up the Elder’s scent and not the smell of the nearest liquor cabinet. 

With a bark, Dogmeat shot off over the fairway and Murphy jogged after him, shoving the flask back into her pocket. MacCready and Haylen brought up the rear, and together they ascended a gentle slope to the north. At the top was the putting green, shorn lower than the grass around it. Its center was a churned mess of sod, with four deep wheel impressions in the middle and a clear blast radius from propellers. 

“The Institute,” Haylen said to Murphy breathlessly, pointing to the dents left in the ground. “They sank in a bit too low, probably struggled to get airborne again. Don’t land vertibirds on soggy turf.” 

“Noted.” 

“Over here!” MacCready beckoned from Dogmeat’s side. The women joined them, and another flash of lightning illuminated the scene. Fading footprints in the disturbed mud, a man’s boots and a narrower shoe stepping over each other in a scuffle. 

“Think it’s him?” MacCready asked. Murphy pressed her lips together and shivered. She offered the flask to Dogmeat again, but the canine ignored her. He whuffed to himself a few times before tearing off to the west, leaving the others to follow as best they could. Murphy couldn’t make out any visible trail, but Dogmeat crossed two sand traps and another putting green before crashing straight into a grove of trees dividing the fairways. His three pursuers hesitated before diving in after him, pushing branches and bushes aside as they went. The rain intensified inside the foliage, raindrops clattering against the leaves until they could barely hear themselves. MacCready’s eyes were wild now, and it was Murphy’s turn to reach out in reassurance, slowing the advance until they could be sure their own movement was covered and their surroundings were safe. 

Dogmeat’s muddy paw prints and broken path through the underbrush led the three of them to a small clearing where the dog sat waiting, panting happily. Murphy held a hand up in warning, and Haylen and MacCready froze behind her. In response, Dogmeat stood, barked, and turned to point his nose up at a handsome white pine tree behind him. 

Murphy looked back at her companions. MacCready nodded and panned over the tree with his rifle scope before shrugging. _ “Can’t see,” _ he mouthed. 

Haylen motioned as if to suggest circling the clearing. Murphy jerked her head to indicate her own intentions. Slowly, MacCready and Haylen began to move under the forest cover in either direction, while she readied both of her pistols and stepped carefully out into the clearing. The rain was pouring down again, obscuring her vision and hiding any noise she made. Step by step, she made her way to Dogmeat’s side, beneath the lower spread of the pine tree and out of the storm’s punishment. 

Water dripped steadily around her as she peered upward, through the spiral of branches that climbed into the verdant sky. Dogmeat barked again, and a burst of lightning illuminated a figure crouched against the tree’s trunk, at least three stories up. The thunder that followed was quicker, closer, and Murphy watched the shadow anxiously for any sign of movement. There was none. She wanted to call out, but MacCready’s warning about announcing their presence gnawed at her mind, and she shifted her weight from foot to foot before holstering her guns. 

The pine’s branches were sturdy, bowing only slightly when she pulled herself up to balance on them. The tree’s trunk was covered in sap, though, and soon Murphy’s hands were as well. Memories of a youth spent clambering up into Minnesota canopies flooded back to her, and her grip grew stronger. Carefully, she heaved herself higher and higher while Dogmeat pranced below, turning tight circles in excitement. 

In a couple of minutes, Murphy was within a few branches of the figure, and one more flash of light outlined the silhouette of a familiar battlecoat. A twig snapped beneath Murphy’s boot and the coat fell back over the head it had been sheltering, revealing a pair of blue eyes that, for once, seemed out of place in a storm. 

“Murphy,” Maxson said in disbelief. “You… _ you… _found me.” 

“Arthur,” she answered with a relieved smile. “Of course I did. Where the hell did _ you _ learn to climb trees?” 

* * *

Once they were safely back on the ground, Maxson submitted himself to Haylen and Murphy’s quick inspections while MacCready kept watch. He was still handcuffed, and Murphy couldn’t help but cast bewildered looks between him and the tree he’d managed to scale. He was also in one piece, miraculously, though some impressive bruises were beginning to flower on his pale face. Murphy didn’t know if they were from his defense of her inside the Institute bunker or some recent encounter, but the bleeding laser burns on his legs were certainly new. Haylen gingerly picked at the singed gashes in his officer’s uniform before shaking her head. “We need to get out of this if I’m going to treat him properly,” she said, gesturing at the sky. 

Murphy nodded and looked up to another crack of thunder. “We need to get out of the trees anyway. Worst place to be, in a storm.” 

“There appeared to be a large building north of where the Institute landed,” Maxson offered. “Though, given the state of the grounds, it may be occupied.” 

“Only one way to find out,” MacCready said, looking to Murphy for input. The others did as well, and Murphy consulted her Pip-Boy map before agreeing and pointing vaguely in the direction of the golf course’s clubhouse. 

Just outside the little dividing forest was a cart track that led northeast. MacCready took the lead, hustling the rest of them along it while lightning and thunder split the sky above in quicker and quicker succession. The rain was coming in sheets now, blowing angrily against their left sides from towering emerald clouds that crackled with pent-up energy. Murphy grabbed Maxson’s elbow and leaned in to yell in his ear. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m perfectly fine, Captain,” he shouted back. “Look to your surroundings, not me.” 

Murphy gritted her teeth and kept moving. The relief that Maxson was alright was washing off quickly in the cloudburst, replaced by something less forgiving. 

The clubhouse came into view just as they rounded the edge of the woods, a quaint Colonial-style resort building with a sagging roof and multiple broken windows, dark and silent. They made a beeline for it, pounding up the stairs to the patio attached to the second level. MacCready poked out the remaining bits of glass in one of the taller windows with the end of his rifle, and Dogmeat jumped through immediately. MacCready aimed the gun at the room inside before stepping through himself. Murphy followed, plasma pistols at the ready, and together they moved stealthily into the interior. 

Tattered furniture upholstered in faux green leather was scattered tastefully around the lounge inside, placed at natural intervals with coffee tables and ashtrays. Dogmeat sniffed at a huge, brick fireplace that sat cold and empty in the center of the back wall, water dripping down into its rusty box. Intact golf trophy cases lined either side of it. Murphy noted a pile of firewood stacked next to the hearth, and her brow furrowed. She rounded a small counter on the left and found its bar shelves empty but for a few dusty bottles with questionable contents. MacCready peered down a dark hallway on the right. “Office and equipment rooms,” he confirmed over the sound of rain on the roof. 

Murphy joined him, as did Maxson, who had pulled an Institute shock baton from inside his battlecoat. Murphy eyed it and him with misgiving as he brandished it in cuffed hands. “Think we should hunker down here and watch the exits?” she asked. 

“We ought to do a full sweep,” Maxson insisted. 

_ “You’re _injured,” Murphy argued, pointing to his legs. “If you want us to do a full sweep, you should let Bobby and I handle it while Lieutenant Haylen patches you up.” 

“Captain, I’m more than fit for combat. If we look to our-” 

_ “No.” _ The weight of the choices he’d made to land them in this position came crashing in, and Murphy put her foot down. “With all due respect, Arthur, you’ve done enough.”

She slammed Alpha down onto the nearest table and pointed to Haylen, who had drifted over to Dogmeat and the fireplace. “Get a fire going and stay put. We’ll figure out who’s cutting the grass outside and handle any threats.” 

Maxson opened his mouth, eyes blazing, and she rounded on him with a scowl of her own, daring him to say something. The Elder thought better of himself and turned back, his soaked battlecoat dripping on the wooden floor. An amused rush of air left MacCready’s nostrils, and Murphy gave him a sharp look. He made a show of glancing away quickly, but his smirk remained. 

The two of them located the stairwell and headed upstairs first, trying as best they could to avoid making noise. MacCready remained silent as they checked each of the rooms on the third level, avoiding holes where the roof was leaking and glancing back every now and then to make sure they weren’t followed. It appeared to be the guest rooms floor, each doorway leading to a suite with a bed and small bathroom attached. Murphy noted with some trepidation that, aside from weather damage and rust, the rooms were spotless. The intact beds were even made up with musty blankets, but there were zero signs of life. 

When they reached a laundry and linens closet at the end of the hallway, MacCready relaxed his grip on his rifle a tad. “You alright, boss?” he asked in a low voice, barely discernible under the patter of rain above. 

Murphy sighed and lowered her remaining pistol. “Yeah. I’m fine.” 

“Hey.” MacCready put a hand to her cheek, then pulled her into a wet hug. “We got him. Provided his people don’t get wiped out by giant crabs before we can leave, we’re gonna be okay. Us, the Minutemen, everyone.” 

“I know.” Murphy closed her eyes and sank into his embrace for a second, allowing herself the moment of relaxation she hadn’t had since she’d left Sanctuary. When she pulled away, she caught his lips in a brief kiss before readying her gun again. “Come on. We still have to check the basement.” 

* * *

The clubhouse’s lowest level contained a defunct kitchen, a picked-over pantry and another lounge, larger and full of dining tables set with placemats and cutlery. Just off the dining room was a maintenance closet, and here, finally, did MacCready and Murphy find the source of the golf course’s upkeep. A row of eight Mister Handy pods stood along the back wall, their battered contents powered down but unmistakably still functioning, given the pile of cans with various levels of fuel inside at the far end. Murphy looked around for a control terminal, but none were visible. The robots remained unresponsive anyway, even to a tap on the pod glass from MacCready. 

“Should we… you know…” he mimed smashing the butt of his rifle into the nearest one’s dome. 

Murphy shook her head. “Safer to turn them off via terminal commands. There’s got to be a computer upstairs in one of the offices.” 

“I think I saw one.” MacCready swung the gun onto his back and scratched beneath his hat. “Haylen’s got a knack for hacking, if you can’t get into it.” 

They left the Mister Handys to their slumber and made their way back upstairs to the lounge, where they found Maxson seated before a small fire, hissing in pain while Haylen disinfected his laser burns. 

“One more, the deepest one,” the lieutenant warned him before pouring a splash of liquid into his ugliest wound. Dogmeat whined and scooted closer to the young Elder, concerned. Maxson tilted his head back and clenched his jaw, but he kept his leg steady while Haylen dabbed at the bleeding gash. Murphy joined her at his side and offered her the sewing kit from the medical supplies on a nearby table, but Haylen waved it off and pointed instead at the gauze and bandage wraps. 

“We can’t stitch it up until we can debride, or at least until we’re sure his burn is past the stage where it’s prone to infection,” she explained, folding up gauze to fit the length of the wounds. “And, seeing as circumstances led him into the bacteria-rich forest, we need to be extra-cautious. Laser injuries are nasty business. Nothing you don’t see in Brotherhood operations, though, so I’ve had my practice- I just wish I had some silver cream to apply.” 

She wound the bandages around Maxson’s leg to hold the gauze in place, easily passing the roll through the fabric she’d cut away from his uniform to access the site. “You’re _ sure _ you don’t want a stimpak?” she asked as she tied her handiwork off. 

“Save it,” Maxson replied. “We may yet need it, before the storm is through.” 

“Then no strenuous activity until Knight-Captain Cade takes a look at it,” Haylen admonished, brushing her hands off and packing up her first aid kit again. 

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” 

Murphy and MacCready pulled chairs over to the fireplace, and while the sniper settled comfortably into his, Murphy faced hers toward Maxson and perched on the edge of it. “What happened with the Institute?” she asked pointedly, searching his face. 

Maxson tried to slick his damp hair back with his cuffed hands and failed. “Nothing… unexpected. They hugged the coast until they decided to be rid of me. Upon landing, however, it became clear they had hostile intentions, so I sought to free myself and managed to escape.” 

Murphy’s eyes narrowed. “Hostile intentions. What exactly happened when you touched down?” 

“Details for a later discussion, Captain,” Maxson growled. 

Their eyes met stubbornly for a beat. Haylen gulped and swept her first aid kit up from the table, retreating to grab another piece of wood for the fire. MacCready’s eyes flickered between the two of them, entertained. 

Murphy broke the staring match first, rifling through her pockets until she produced a bobby pin. “Give me your hands,” she offered. 

Maxson held out his arms, and Murphy attacked the handcuffs’ locking mechanism with the pin. She swore profusely under her breath as she bent the pin into the shape she thought the lock necessitated, and tried to ignore the fact that her fingers were warm against Maxson’s wrists. 

Haylen poked at the fire with one of the iron tools that hung from the mantelpiece. “What did you two find?” she asked MacCready, who was holding his limbs over the warmth. 

“Beds upstairs, sleeping robots downstairs,” MacCready answered with a yawn. “No terminal down there to control them, so it might be on this level somewhere.” 

“Really?” Haylen perked up. “Is it safe to look around?” 

“Probably, but you still shouldn’t go by yourself.” 

“Here.” Murphy stood abruptly and threw the mangled bobby pin down on the table next to Alpha. “I can’t do this right now. Haylen, come with me, we’ll make sure those bots don’t wake up.” 

Dogmeat whined again. Maxson frowned and held his hands up. “What about…?” 

“Bobby?” 

“Yep.” MacCready groaned and stretched his arms before pulling himself out of the chair. “I’ll take a crack at it. Keep your eyes and ears open, you two.” 

Murphy left him to it and re-entered the hallway, poking her head into the offices until she found the one with a bulky terminal inside. Her Pip-Boy light revealed that the computer’s screen had been smashed some time ago, and she sighed in defeat. “Figures.” 

“Why don’t we look at the docking pods?” Haylen suggested. “Usually there’s some kind of fail-safe control mechanism wired into them.” 

“I didn’t see one when we were down there, but we can double-check, I suppose.” 

The rain was dashing frantically against the intact windows of the downstairs dining room, and Haylen jumped when a leaf blew in from outside and plastered itself to her leg. “It’s really coming down now,” she remarked, peeling it away from herself and flicking it onto the floor. 

Murphy paused to watch for lightning, and she counted the seconds until thunder boomed following the next flash. “Moving away, I think, but we’re stuck here for a bit. Maintenance room’s this way.” 

Haylen walked up and down the row of Mister Handy pods and examined each of them carefully, but she came away with the same conclusion as Murphy and MacCready. “Strange. If their only control console was destroyed, they shouldn’t be on a pod cycle at all, they should be wandering around in their old routines until they break down. There’s got to be some kind of…” 

She was interrupted by a loud crash upstairs, and she and Murphy looked to the ceiling. Dogmeat was barking and voices were yelling. Footsteps overhead scrambled, and the two women ran for the maintenance room’s door. They were halfway across the dining room when one of its windows crashed inward, and a laser blast collided with a nearby chair. “Multiple hostile targets detected,” a robotic voice announced loudly through the new entryway. 

“Protectrons!” Haylen exclaimed. 

“Shit.” Murphy flipped off the safety on Omega and pulled her forward toward the stairwell, but when they reached it, the sound of clanking footsteps could be heard descending the stairs. They backtracked quickly, and Murphy realized with horror that the Mister Handys were powering up too, lights blinking on the pods visible through the maintenance room door. The protectron they had encountered was awkwardly trying to climb through the open window, and Murphy fired several plasma blasts at its glass dome before ducking inside the kitchen with Haylen and slamming the door. 

The muffled sounds of angry Mister Handys and protectrons began to echo in the clubhouse, and Murphy discovered, to her relief, that the kitchen door had both a knob lock and a deadbolt. She clicked both into place and helped Haylen drag an empty chest freezer in front of the door, adrenaline pumping through her every vein. “The boys,” she wheezed, jerking her head upward. “How do we…?” 

Haylen snapped her fingers and began to search the room. She let out a sound of satisfaction when she located an intercom next to a waitstaff counter. She pressed the button marked _ ALL ROOMS. _ “Elder Maxson? RJ? Please come in, over.” 

The response took a minute. Finally, Maxson’s voice came in on the other end, lighting up the red bulb marked _LAUNDRY._ _“We read you, Lieutenant. Are you and the Captain secure? Over.” _

Haylen switched over to hail the laundry room directly. “Affirmative. We’re in the kitchen downstairs, set comms to direct contact only. We’ve blocked the exit for now. Over.” 

Agitated mutters and some sounds of wrestling answered Haylen, and MacCready took over the intercom. _ “We’re on the third floor. The bots came in the same way we did, a whole passel of ‘em. We took out a couple but they swarmed us pretty quickly, so the three of us made for higher ground.” _

“The ones downstairs powered up too,” Murphy interjected. “Are you safe? Are either of you hurt?” 

_ “No new injuries to report,” _ Maxson replied gruffly, reclaiming control of the speaker. _ “We’ve blocked the door with a washing machine for now, though we likely won’t be able to make much of a stand if they break through it. There is little room to maneuver, over.” _

_ “There’s no need to maneuver,” _ MacCready argued. _ “We can shelter in place until the storm’s over and we’re ready to knock out the window and shimmy down.” _

The two men continued to debate their circumstances freely over the intercom, and Murphy and Haylen looked at each other. “I think their button might be stuck down,” Haylen guessed. “Should we tell them we can hear them?” 

“I don’t think it’ll make any difference in their attitudes,” Murphy replied. “In fact, it might come in handy, we can hear if something happens to them up there.” 

She surveyed the solid concrete walls of the kitchen grimly. “At least they have a window to get out of. Not an option for us, I’m afraid. Did you say something about the bots being on a pod cycle earlier? What did you mean by that?” 

“It’s a fuel conservation mode,” Haylen explained, rubbing her forehead. “Usually on a timer. Robots return to their pods when they’re not in use, and they power back up when they’re most likely to be needed. What time is it right now?” 

Murphy checked her Pip-Boy. “Just past five in the evening.” 

“So, this place probably had them on a timer to wake up around five for whatever tasks they were programmed to do.” 

Murphy nodded. “Dinnertime shift. The Mister Handys were probably the housekeeping and kitchen workforce, and the protectrons…” 

“Groundskeeping,” Haylen hopped up to sit on the counter and rubbed her knees. “They might have noticed the smoke from the fire we built and decided to investigate. It’d be out of the ordinary for them.” 

“So, what do we do?” Murphy asked, joining her on the counter. “Wait for them to lose interest in us and go about their normal routines?” 

“Unless there’s a control terminal in here or the laundry room, that’s our best bet.” Haylen sighed, resigned. “They’ll probably return to their pods around midnight. It’s a pretty basic cycle, I’ve seen it before at Wattz Consumer Electronics in the Commonwealth and Darren’s Discounts in the Capital Wasteland.” 

There was a metal tap on the kitchen door and some inquisitive whirring. Murphy jumped off the counter and moved to brace the freezer. She and Haylen held their breath. When the Mister Handy left again, Murphy let hers out in a long, low exhale. “Tell the boys what you told me, and we’ll shelter in place until midnight. Maybe the storm will have let up by then and we can get off the golf course. And tell them to keep it down, unless they want a horde of robots trying to break in their door.” 

* * *

The hours of imprisonment in the kitchen ticked by slowly, punctuated by the occasional curious robot banging at the blocked exit and small bouts of bickering over the intercom. Murphy and Haylen made the most of it, assembling a variety of improvised weapons from the kitchen equipment in case of the worst and raiding the pantry for the remaining food stocks that still seemed edible. Murphy recounted the events following the quarry cave-in to Haylen while she dug into a cold, dented can of Cajun rice and beans. 

“I knew you were supposed to be the Institute hostage,” Haylen admitted. “General Garvey was livid when Rothchild shared that piece of the deal. They had a shouting match and everything. Even Desdemona seemed upset.” 

She picked another stale cereal piece out of the box of Sugar Bombs she had found and examined it. “Do you think Maxson did it because you…” 

“Yes,” Murphy replied bitterly. “But that wasn’t his decision to make.” 

“Right, but… can you _ blame _ him?” Haylen tossed the cereal piece in her mouth and crunched on it. “Eugh. I mean, you two spent so much time pining after each other and trying to convince yourselves that things wouldn’t work out- not without good reason, I’ll admit- and then you finally confirm that you _ did _ feel something, despite squashing it down to try to keep everyone else happy and-” 

“Haylen, I thought I was going to _ die.” _ Murphy’s voice quavered. “Whatever he and I had, might have had, was a moot point. He was there, because of me and my own stupidity, and…” 

“I know, I know,” Haylen reassured her. “Just… don’t be so hard on him. He thought you were gonna die, too.” 

Murphy set the rice and beans aside and put her head in her hands. “I know.” 

Haylen dropped the topic after that, but there were still four hours to go before midnight. Eventually the lieutenant’s eyelids started to droop, so Murphy insisted she bed down on the thick rubber mat by the sinks and try to sleep. She listened to Haylen’s softened breathing from her post at the intercom, cross-legged on the counter with her gun in her lap. 

_ “When did you leave the Capital Wasteland?” _

Murphy turned to look at the speaker. It was Maxson’s voice, but it wasn’t directed at her. 

_ “What’s it to you?” _MacCready countered. 

_ “Nothing. Conversation. I don’t know of many who left, following Project Purity’s completion.” _

Murphy could almost hear MacCready sizing Maxson up. _ “It was three years after Purity Day. I got kicked out of Little Lamplight and found the alternatives lacking, so I made for more caps-filled pastures.” _

_ “And you joined the Gunners.” _

_ “You don’t know me.” _

_ “I know the uniform you’ve re-purposed.” _ Clothing shifting, repositioning. _ “What made you leave?” _

_ “The usual stuff. Got sick of the work. Fell in love, was about to become a father. She wanted to swim again, so I found my exit and took her home.” _

_ “A Capital Wasteland native as well?” _

_ “No.” _

They fell silent for several minutes, and Murphy was starting to think they’d called casual conversation quits entirely when Maxson tried again. _ “You grew up with Ricky in the Lamplight Caverns.” _

_ “Yeah, and you tossed him in jail because he dropped your giant robot.” _

_ “An unfortunate occurrence, soon proven to be beyond his control, I’m sure,” _ Maxson replied testily. _ “Though I find the fact that you have knowledge of the Brotherhood’s inner conflicts to be a troubling one.” _

_ “Everyone in the Commonwealth knows about your ‘inner conflicts’ now, you made sure of that.” _

_ “Elaborate.” _

_ “Not my job.” _

Maxson blew an impatient breath out through his nose. _ “What reasons do you have for being obstinate?” _

_ “You mean not talking? Plenty.” _

_ “I mean you no harm, I’m simply inquiring.” _

_ “Ask someone else.” _

_ “Did your Minutemen superiors order you not to fraternize with me?” _

_ “I’m not with the Minutemen,” _ MacCready corrected him. _ “I’m with Murphy.” _

_ “I see.” _ Murphy could tell that Maxson was weighing his response carefully. _ “I suppose you harbor… reservations about this mission to retrieve me from the Institute’s custody.” _

_ “Not really.” _The response was casual, but with a hint of suspicion. 

_ “She spoke highly of you, during our time in confinement.” _ Maxson’s voice was softening, and Murphy strained to make his words out. _ “I thank you, for giving her what I cannot.” _

MacCready didn’t answer right away, but when he did, his voice was low as well. _ “I should be thanking you. The Institute would’ve pushed her out of the vertibird and kept flying. You saved her life.” _

_ “I’m beginning to think,” _ Maxson mused, _ “That Vault 111’s sole survivor may outlast all of us, despite the enemies she’s made. She certainly will if she manages to keep charming her companions as thoroughly as she has charmed us.” _

A muffled whuff from Dogmeat filtered through the speaker as if in agreement, but MacCready ignored the admissions of affection. _ “What did she say about me?” _

_ “She was brief but thorough. She left you everything in her spoken will, save the dog, her power armor and her Pip-Boy. She said to tell you she was sorry, and she thought you would already know what was left unsaid.” _

_ “Yeah.” _ MacCready sighed. _ “Sounds about right. She’s not wrong, but if she keeps throwing herself into pits looking for trouble, maybe we should start saying it.” _

_ “It would behoove you to remind her of this yourself, Robert Joseph MacCready.” _

_ “Don’t use my full name unless I’ve done something to earn it, ‘Max.’” _

Maxson chuckled at the nickname. _ “Touché. I see why she likes you.” _

_ “Did you swallow a dictionary when you were a kid?” _

_ “Several.” _

The two men laughed together, but their discussion was over. Murphy leaned her head back against the wall, closed her eyes and smiled sadly up at the ceiling. 

* * *

Midnight arrived, and Murphy was the first to poke her head out into the clubhouse dining room again. She tiptoed between the tables until she arrived at the maintenance closet, where she was relieved to find all eight Mister Handys slumbering in their pods once again. Haylen relayed this info to the men upstairs, and together the five intruders made their way back to the mid-level lounge to regroup. The robots had put the fire out, most likely due to the lack of guests utilizing the space for the evening. 

When they were sure that there were no protectrons lurking about, Murphy stuck her head outside. The rain had all but stopped by now, and the dark green storm was drifting east, stringing itself thin enough in places to reveal a sky full of stars. 

Haylen produced one of Ingram’s signal grenades from her pack, and Murphy nodded. “Let’s make for the road we came in on and fire one off. Kells is probably worried sick.” 

“Not about us, though.” Haylen raised her eyebrows and cast a judgmental look at Maxson, who had the grace to look mildly sheepish. He rubbed his freed wrists and said nothing. 

The five made their way back down the clubhouse patio and into the parking lot, following the drive back to the river road that led to Brunswick. Once they were out of sight of the golf course’s buildings, Haylen pulled the grenade’s pin and tossed it down. They waited wordlessly, watching the smoke curl up into the air until the drone of vertibirds began to pierce through the departing clouds.


	8. Wanderer's Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which MacCready helps Murphy disentangle some things.

Murphy’s hair, Haylen’s hat and the tails of MacCready’s coat were swept up in the downwash of the four vertibirds which descended to receive the rescue party. First to poke her head out was Proctor Ingram, who gave a visible sigh of relief when she caught sight of Elder Arthur Maxson standing by at the signal grenade. The fist she thumped to her chest in the honorary Brotherhood greeting was almost enthusiastic enough to dent her power armor frame. The Knights accompanying her followed suit, and a few even went so far as to remove their helmets and laugh together in celebration. Some, however, seemed to share the sentiments of Lancer-Captain Kells, whose salute was stiff and brief. Maxson’s composure didn’t waver as he held a short council with the two officers, but he offered a rare smile and wave to the troops which were whooping it up over his safe return. The vertibirds began lifting off again as quickly as they had landed. Murphy, MacCready, Haylen and Dogmeat piled into Ingram’s aircraft along with Maxson, and the Lancers turned their noses south to follow Kells’ lead back to the Commonwealth. 

Elder Arthur Maxson submitted himself to the prodding of a Scribe with dignity, but he waved off his requests to use a stimpak on him just as he had Haylen’s. Ingram, meanwhile, filled the entire cabin in on the events of the night from the Brotherhood’s point of view. The contingent had managed to fight off the hermit crabs, but three combatants suffered injuries in the process. Ingram had ordered the search party to split, with eight returning to the airport and 15 continuing. The remaining 15 had immediately run into the mud and flooding that the Minutemen group had encountered, which bogged down their power armor and prevented them from taking more convenient routes. Ingram, unable to call for vertibird assistance due to the worsening weather, decided to hold in place at the town’s abandoned elementary school until the storm waned. The school turned out to be home to a swarm of feral ghouls, which kept the Brotherhood on their toes for most of the evening hours. 

“We got lucky,” Ingram admitted. “The winds let up just after the Institute bird started moving again, and Kells packed Jones and a recon squad onto the Spatha and sent her off in pursuit. We never lost contact with the tracker, which is a goddamn miracle.” 

Maxson leaned forward in his seat. “Anything to report?” 

“Nothing yet, but they’ll have to land again eventually. Then their iguana’s cooked.” 

Maxson’s expression hardened, and his hand went to the bruises on his face. His eyes found Murphy’s. She looked away. 

* * *

It was nearly two in the morning when the vertibirds arrived at Dunwich Borers. Murphy could barely keep her eyes open as she tumbled out onto solid ground again, and MacCready had to steady her beneath the Brotherhood’s mobile floodlights. He looked down at her as she blinked in their bright beams, and she thought maybe he was going to ask if she was okay, but all he did was steer her toward the nearest Institute crate to have a seat. Clearly, her current appearance said everything about how she was holding up. 

They sat there under the work lights, her head against his shoulder and his arm around her, Dogmeat curled up on the other side of her while the Brotherhood spun in purposeful circles, busy as bees. Haylen disappeared among the Minutemen that remained, probably searching for Curie. Head Scribe Rothchild greeted Maxson out of earshot, breaking protocol to clasp his hand fervently and smile before launching into a lengthy site report. Lancer-Captain Kells made himself scarce again, but not before arguing with Ingram about removing the tracking equipment she had brought on board his fleet. Maxson and Rothchild met with Desdemona and Preston Garvey near where the deactivated synths had stood when Murphy left. They were gone now, and Desdemona was furious. Every movement of her body betrayed her feelings as Preston tried to remain diplomatic, tried to steer things toward the future of the alliance, the future of the Commonwealth. More than once, the Minutemen general glanced Murphy’s way, but she couldn’t muster any expression that he might have found reassuring. 

When Knights and Scribes began removing the crates adjacent to theirs, MacCready turned his head into hers to murmur against her hair. “We should go, boss.” 

“I don’t know if I can,” she mumbled back honestly. 

His chuckle was soft above her ear. “Who’s gonna tell you you can’t?” 

Murphy managed a weak smile. “I mean… I’m not sure I can stand, let alone walk all the way to Breakheart tonight.” 

“I’ll get you home. You’ve given these people enough.” 

Their discussion was interrupted by a polite cough from Head Scribe Rothchild, who had rounded the collection of crates at the quarry’s edge with Preston Garvey. “A moment of your time, vault dweller,” the Brotherhood officer requested. 

Murphy straightened her back, but she stayed seated. Rothchild regarded MacCready with some curiosity before going ahead with his salutation. “I must commend you on the role you and your team played in our young Elder’s rescue. There is no doubt the efforts you went to kept him, and by extension, our chapter, from harm. You have my thanks, and the thanks of the Brotherhood.” 

MacCready looked sideways at Murphy before nodding his head in acknowledgment. Murphy nodded as well, but kept quiet. A spark of satisfaction glinted in Rothchild’s eye as he went on. “Additionally, I feel it necessary to apologize to you, your general and the Minutemen for my outburst following the Institute’s escape.” 

He hung his head, giving the outward appearance of regret. “An unfortunate surge of emotion overcame me. I should not have allowed my feelings to rule me in that moment, and I am truly sorry. Pay no heed to what I said in fear and anger. Our alliance endures.” 

Preston crossed his arms and gave Rothchild a curt nod. “Forgiven and forgotten, Head Scribe. Have a safe flight back to the airport.” 

Rothchild curled his fist over his heart. “Until we meet again, General. Captain.” 

He shot Murphy and MacCready one last beguiling look before turning back toward his duties supervising the site’s Scribes. Murphy watched him go, and as soon as he was out of earshot she turned her focus to Preston. “Forgive, but don’t forget, General.” 

“I know.” Preston checked his surroundings before leaning in. “Man’s been nothing but a pain in my ass since he flew in, but we have to make nice. The Commonwealth’s depending on it, and he knows he still has most of the leverage, with the tech he managed to secure and the obvious military superiority. And without Maxson around to call the shots?” 

He shook his head. “Wish you’d been there, Murphy. We could’ve used your skills.” 

“Thanks, Preston.” Murphy ran a hand over her face. “Do you still need me here, or…?” 

“About that.” Preston pressed his lips together and scratched beneath his hat. “Rothchild would’ve liked to tie you to a chair and take a statement from you tonight about what you and Maxson saw when you were down in the bunker, but I argued you would need time to rest after the rescue mission. The Elder agreed with me, said you should get some sleep and medical attention, but you’ll still need to report to the Prydwen to give Proctor Quinlan your account.” 

Murphy’s shoulders sank. “How long do I have?” 

“A couple of days, at most,” Preston admitted. “With the Brotherhood finishing up here, we can spare the shared vertibird to come pick you up at the Slog on Tuesday. Should give you enough time to recuperate and collect your thoughts.” 

He smiled wearily. “There’s some other things I’d like to talk to you about, but it can wait a day or two. Go see your boys. I’ll take it from here.” 

* * *

The walk to Breakheart Banks was a blur. The sun hadn’t yet risen when Murphy and MacCready staggered onto the Minutemen synths’ farm, though the edge of the sky was beginning to lighten. His arm was around her shoulder, holding her up even as a white dog with black patches and Codsworth nearly bowled her over in excitement. MacCready led her up the hill to the settlement’s shack while the robot filled them in on every missed minute, pausing only to scold Nine and Dogmeat when their tussling came too close. Jules nodded at them as they passed the firepit. He was wearing one of the sets of combat armor Danse had purchased months ago, and he looked far more at ease in it than Murphy remembered. 

Codsworth hung back when they reached the shack’s entrance, and MacCready held the door open for Murphy to step inside. She spotted the boys among the sleeping figures on the bed mats immediately, curled up together next to Danse. Their breaths rose and fell beneath a patchwork quilt, and Duncan’s small hand reached up to rub his face. Shaun mumbled and tugged the blanket over his head. 

Murphy turned back to MacCready, grateful tears welling in her eyes. He took her hand in the dark and pulled her into his chest. 

* * *

When Murphy awoke, sunlight was streaming through the cracks in the wooden walls around her. She sat up slowly, wincing slightly as the bumps and bruises she’d sustained over the past few days protested her movements. The quilt Duncan and Shaun had been sharing fell away from her, and she took a moment to let the odd feeling in her stomach settle. 

“Preston asked her to stay at the site a little longer,” MacCready was saying outside the door. “The Brotherhood’s packing up though, so I’m sure she’s not far behind us.” 

“The vertibird movement has been near-constant.” Danse, concerned as usual. “The Scribes will likely want to catalogue everything they managed to recover back at the safety of the airport. Did Elder Maxson plan to station troops at the quarry?” 

“I didn’t ask.” 

Murphy looked at her Pip-Boy.  _ 3:34 p.m. _ She said a silent thanks for Preston’s insistence she get some rest, before pushing up from her mat onto wobbly legs. 

The entrance swung open, revealing the two men sitting on the stairs outside. MacCready, hand on the door, cracked a weak smirk at her disheveled state. Danse looked her up and down, taking in the marks on her arms, the blooming web of violet in the crook of her left elbow and the circles under her eyes. “Report, soldier,” the former Paladin rumbled, clearly disconcerted. 

Murphy shook her head. “Not out there. I don’t want… we shouldn’t…” 

They scrambled to their feet immediately, boots thumping against the floorboards. Danse latched the door before turning to face her again. He reached out, hesitant, and Murphy took advantage of the opening to throw her arms around him and squeeze him. “I’m so glad to see you again,” she mumbled into his shirt. 

Danse held his arms up awkwardly before settling them around her shoulders to gently pat her back. “Likewise, Murphy. Do you need more time? I can-” 

She cut him off. “No. I should… let’s sit down.” 

Relating the events from when she’d left Breakheart Banks a week ago was slow going. Danse asked a million questions about the Minutemen’s positioning at the quarry standoff, the Railroad’s arrival and the Brotherhood’s posturing at negotiations. He was on edge for Murphy’s entire description of Liberty Prime’s fall, and his horror at the robot’s fate was enough to earn him some judgmental looks from MacCready. Both men were bewildered, however, when she shared Haylen’s realization of her visions’ true nature. 

“Psychoclairvoyance?” Danse blurted out. “Are you positive? It’s real, certainly, but extremely rare…” 

MacCready clapped a hand to his forehead. “Of course. Of  _ course _ you are. Here I am worried you took a stray piece of Institute shrapnel to the brain, but this whole time you’ve been running around turning into a psyker. God, I’m blind.” 

Murphy looked at him, confused. “Haylen… didn’t tell you?” 

“No.” He shrugged. “I was there for three-and-a-half days. She never said a thing.” 

“Perhaps she thought it was not her news to share,” Danse offered. 

“Probably.” Murphy wondered briefly if MacCready’s appearance at Dunwich Borers had tipped Haylen off about their relationship moving past friendship, but decided not to dwell on it. She launched into the trek through the quarry, the landslide and the time spent waiting for others to dig them out. She skated past the details of her Rebound-fueled memories- they still didn’t feel like they were completely hers to share- but she explained how they drove her to investigate the irradiated spring and the secrets it held. 

Danse listened, spellbound, by her recollection of the Institute’s hidden base, but his expression grew ugly when she described the scientists’ desperation and William’s vengeful attack with the shock baton. MacCready twitched when she covered her bruises against the remembered pain. He looked so helpless that Murphy held a hand out to him in reassurance, and he took it instinctively. Danse snapped out of his mood instantly, and he looked rapidly between them. Murphy waved him off, but not before catching MacCready’s amusement at leaving the ex-Brotherhood soldier speechless with one gesture. 

The rest of the story went quickly from there, and by the time Murphy got to the part where the vertibirds took off from Maine, Danse was stroking his chin thoughtfully. “So the Institute admits defeat.” 

“So it would appear.” Murphy crossed her legs and leaned forward. “The Brotherhood has Madison Li in custody, I assume, and I’ll need to report to the Prydwen the day after tomorrow to give them the same rundown I just gave you, but I think that might be the end of it. Most of it, anyway. There’s still a lot we don’t know, but maybe Dr. Li can shed some light on things.” 

Danse nodded. “The Diamond City and Covenant attacks, the woman snatching Gen 2 synths in Salem, the whereabouts of Dr. Zimmer… I’d begin making a list if I were you. I will happily assist, if you’d like.” 

Murphy shook her head. “Not tonight. I need to do something thoroughly removed from Institute scheming. Where is everybody?” 

In answer, MacCready and Danse stood and helped her to her feet. Together they walked out into the afternoon, down the stairs and around the building to the settlement’s main field, where Jules and Briar were leading the brahmin to till new furrows in the soil. Behind them followed Shaun, Duncan and Marina, seeding the rows from paper packets with carrots drawn on them in crayon. They thrust their seed packets into Marina’s hands when they spotted Murphy, leaving the synth woman to call out caution as they ran precariously over the soft dirt. Murphy stooped down to catch Duncan when he tripped on the home stretch, scooping him into her arms with a giggle. 

_ “Mungo,” _ Duncan admonished, rubbing his dirty hands on her face. 

“Aw, what did I do?” 

Shaun leaned forward to wipe his own hands on the knees of his jeans. “You left,” he said reproachfully. 

Murphy hefted Duncan higher, tucking him against her hip. She put a hand on Shaun’s head and ruffled his hair. “I did. And I came back.” 

MacCready cleared his throat. Murphy dropped her hand quickly, realizing her mistake, but the surprised delight on Shaun’s face told her that he didn’t share the same opinion of the slip in formality. 

* * *

Later, when the sun had set and Shaun and Duncan’s yawns had grown long enough to warrant bedding down, Murphy led MacCready away from the fire and into the shadows of the farm’s borders. Northeast of the settlement, an old pickup truck sat facing the Saugus River. Its orange paint was receding under rust, and Murphy felt the creep of the grit beneath her fingers before climbing to sit atop the vehicle’s hood. MacCready clambered up beside her and rested his rifle over his lap. Together, they watched the river flow by the rocky overlook, shimmering under an April half moon. 

MacCready spoke first. “I hadn’t been back here since we cleared it out with Danse. They’ve done a good job cleaning it up, making it their own. I can… I can see why you thought it’d be a good place to stay. With Shaun.” 

Murphy hugged her knees and nodded. “It is a good place. But… he deserves more.” 

“He does.” MacCready put a hand on her knee, hesitant. “So do you.” 

Murphy put a hand over his briefly before removing it. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I left out, when I was going over things for you and Danse.” 

“Okay.” 

“After I got beat to hell with a shock baton, I was pretty sure…” Murphy looked away and rubbed her palm across her face. “I was pretty sure they’d kill me. If I got on that vertibird, that was it. Everything just started… coming out, all at once. I started telling Arthur what to do with my stuff, what I wanted to say to everyone, and I told him… I told him…” 

MacCready’s face fell. “You told him you loved him.” 

The knot in Murphy’s chest tightened further. “Yeah. I was scared. And when I took the last of the Rebound, I saw…” 

She sighed, frustrated with herself. “I shouldn’t say. It was way back in his past, and he was alone. Afraid, in pain. Something… some part of me didn’t want to go out without telling him how I’d felt about him, without letting him know that even if he felt alone, he wasn’t. It just slipped out, and what I’d thought was… gone…” 

Murphy couldn’t finish the sentence. Judging by MacCready’s face, she didn’t need to. They looked away from each other, across the river to the dark silhouette of the distant asylum. A light burned on the institution’s grounds, and Murphy fixed her eyes on it. 

“I get it,” MacCready said. 

“You… what? What’s to get?” 

“Why he got on that vertibird instead.” He looked down at his rifle. “Thought it might be pure altruism, but I should’ve known better. Anyway, it’s not important.” 

“How is it not important?” Murphy asked in disbelief. 

MacCready flicked his eyes up to meet hers. “I knew you still felt something for him. It’s hard to stamp things like that out completely. The real question is, does the way you feel about Maxson change the way you feel about me?” 

“You’re… not upset,” Murphy probed. 

“Nah. Well.” MacCready bobbed his head noncommittally. “A little put out, but no. Not upset. No point. It’d be like me being upset that you still loved Nate. You’re mourning something you didn’t have a choice in ending, and it’d be wrong for me to try to control how you feel about that. It kind of fits into what I wanted to talk to you about, actually, but you haven’t answered my question.” 

He looked at her again, and Murphy couldn’t help but let her breath out in exasperated wonder. His eyes were gray in the moonlight, rimmed with regret, but he was telling the truth: They held not an ounce of resentment. All the doubt and noise in Murphy’s head stilled, her heartbeat quickened and her focus slid back into place. 

“Even when I was telling him what I’d felt, I was still thinking of you,” she murmured. “You’re tied up in those feelings, too, Bobby. I’m sorry they’re so tangled, but that doesn’t mean I don’t… you know.” 

MacCready smiled. “Still having trouble admitting it, though. It’s okay.” 

Murphy released the breath she’d been holding in relief. “What did I ever do to deserve you?” 

“A whole lot. I’ll tell you someday.” 

He put his hand on her knee again, and they watched the moon make its way across the night’s expanse. A vertibird drone disturbed the cool air, somewhere far off in the distance. 

“Do you still want to say what you were going to?” Murphy asked. “About how I deserve… more.” 

“I meant…” MacCready sighed, caressed the outside of her kneecap with his thumb. “When you left Sanctuary. I said you couldn’t help running off to try to fix things. No point in trying to make you stay put, you’re drawn to trouble. And then, when I heard you’d been buried alive with Maxson and Dogmeat, after the initial panic, you know what I thought?” 

Murphy hung her head. “That I’d abandoned you and everyone I care about, again?” 

MacCready grinned. “I thought you would sooner dig yourself out with your bare hands than be trapped down there with nothing to do, waiting for someone else to rescue you. It did wonders for my anxiety, really, until you somehow stumbled into the Institute’s clutches. Not your finest plan, boss.” 

“It was the only one I had.” Murphy turned her head to peek up at him. “You weren’t… mad at me? ‘There goes Murphy again, throwing herself into pits,’ or something to that effect?” 

Recognizing his own words, MacCready furrowed his brow. “Eavesdropping on me and Maxson? Shame on you, boss.” 

“Yeah.” Murphy gritted her teeth sheepishly. “Your intercom was stuck open all night.” 

“Huh.” MacCready looked off to the north. “Wonder if he knew. But no, I wasn’t mad. When you were trapped, what were you thinking about the most?” 

Murphy conjured up the emotions that had overwhelmed her beneath the marble. She took a few deep breaths, letting them wash over her again. “The promises I’d made,” she answered finally. “To everyone. To the boys. To you. How I was breaking them, making snap decisions, putting others in danger and just how… how  _ useless _ I felt, sitting in the dark. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to summoning up visions of the past, if only to let me escape my own situation for just a little bit.” 

“Yeah.” MacCready turned back to her. “That’s what I thought you’d say. I know you worry about me and how I need to settle every debt, but your debts weigh on you even more than mine do. They’re just a little bigger in scope.” 

“Okay. So… how do you figure I deserve… better? What do you mean?” 

MacCready didn’t answer immediately, but when he did, his voice was softer. “Anyone who knows you, who loves you, would never try to stop you from chasing down the things you want to fight for. I know you come from a different time, and you have this image in your head about what you’re supposed to do, who you’re supposed to be, but… that time’s over. Don’t keep carrying that guilt.” 

He raised his arms to gesture at the moonlit settlement around them. “I know why you like this place, but I also know why it started to drive you crazy. You don’t have to tie your life to one home, then kick yourself whenever you have to leave it. You can go anywhere, be anything,  _ do _ anything out here. Hell, you’ve already done things most people only  _ dream _ of doing.” 

Murphy sank into herself mournfully. “That’s a nice sentiment. But I can’t just run off all the time and leave you and Duncan and Shaun, as long as I have him, behind. What kind of a partner does that make me? What kind of guardian?” 

“That’s what I mean.” MacCready turned to sit facing her, taking her hands in his. “I can’t speak for Shaun. He’s his own person, and he’s got his own goal to strive for. But Duncan and I… we choose you.  _ I _ choose you.” 

“I can’t ask you to do that for me,” Murphy said quietly. 

“You don’t need to.” He took his hat off, set it aside on the truck and put a hand to her cheek.  _ “I _ can make that choice. And… not to drag Maxson into this, too, but that’s something I can give you that he can’t. Doesn’t matter what he feels. You weren’t made to sit in an airship, and he knows it just as well as I do. I’ve got a wanderer’s heart too, you know. I can be there next to you, wherever you go. I  _ want _ to be there, at your back in tough times and by your side when you’re winning. Being this close to you has made me happier than I’ve ever been before. I  _ love _ you, Murphy. I plan on walking this earth with you until the day I die.” 

He kissed her, pulled her in closer, shoved his gun aside and gathered her into his lap. Murphy ran her hands up into his hair, beneath his coat collar, tried to say without words the things she’d been holding onto since the quarry’s darkness had laid bare her fears and feelings. How did he always manage to surprise her, this man who could find the perfect words to loosen the snarl of her life’s quandaries? 

Her hair shone between his fingers in the moonlight, and breaking apart from him was a sweet struggle. Murphy gave up and caught her breath, resting her forehead against his. 

“I love you too, Robert Joseph MacCready,” she said, smiling shyly up at him. 

He reached up to kiss her forehead. “Full name. You  _ must _ be serious.” 

“Thoroughly.” 


End file.
